flexbuilder - Eclipse's local history...where are files saved?

Question

Can someone explain how Eclipse's local history works?

I accidentally overwrote a file in a project but need to revert to an earlier version. Is there a chance that Eclipse has the older file cached somewhere?

Answer 1

To complete CurtainDog's answer: from eclipse FAQ

Every time you modify a file in Eclipse, a copy of the old contents is kept in the local history. At any time, you can compare or replace a file with any older version from the history.
Although this is no replacement for a real code repository, it can help you out when you change or delete a file by accident.
Local history also has an advantage that it wasn’t really designed for: The history can also help you out when your workspace has a catastrophic problem or if you get disk errors that corrupt your workspace files.
As a last resort, you can manually browse the local history folder to find copies of the files you lost, which is a bit like using Google’s cache to browse Web pages that no longer exist.

Each file revision is stored in a separate file with a random file name inside the history folder. The path of the history folder inside your workspace is

.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history/

You can use your operating system’s search tool to locate the files you are looking for.

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Note, if your need to import your local history into a new workspace, you will need both:

• .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history
• .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.project

to have a functional local history in that new workspace.