Today I was playing with the Eclipse on Mac OS X, and I wanted to move the workspace directory out of the Eclipse install directory. On the Windows version of Eclipse (and I assume the Linux version), you can specify the -data flag to the Eclipse launcher to do the job. Unfortunately, this doesn't work on the Mac. I posted a query to eclipse.tools.jdt and got instructions on what to do.

You'll have to edit the Info.plist file:

- do a Control-click (or right button mouse click) on the Eclipse application
- from the context menu select "Show Package Contents"
- in the new folder double click on "Contents"
- open the file "Info.plist" with your favorite text editor
- at the end of your file (after the "Eclipse" key) change the existing
  arguments or add a new argument (enclosed in a <string> </string> pair).

Be aware that there is already a "-data" argument.

If you want to have your workspace in your home directory, you can use a '~'
character as a shortcut for your home directory.

So with the following two arguments your workspace will be created in your
Document folder:
    <string>-data</string><string>~/Documents/workspace</string>

I've been hoping that the Eclipse folks would steal a feature from IBM's Websphere Studio Application Developer, which allows you to select a workspace directory from a dialog at startup. This plist editing on the Mac is a really good reason for doing the dialog. What if I wanted to switch among a few workspace directories?