Eclipse search on XP

This is a REAL old one, but as so many of us corporate developers are still on xp its worth the mention, I was trying to do the same as Ben Poole is doing here with mac stuff, to get over the terriable seach features in eclipse, but on windows alas the same feature does not search the contents of ‘unknown’ file types ie .Java (mutter Microsoft mutter), you fix this as follows (providing you have SP2 installed):

  1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
  2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
  3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
  4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
  5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
  6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
  7. Close the Indexing Service console.Now the search will stop being such an as and will search the contents of Java files.
    Update**
    turns out on more modern eclipse instances you get the same with the ‘Search’ –> ‘File’ Option, hmmmmm did i miss that coming in??

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