Stop creating files in bin directory

[daliborfilus]

Random files begin to appear in my bin directory after I generated a lot of code by using my custom code generator. I spent a lot of time debugging where these files are being created, who and why makes them, and I don't want my project polluted with completely useless copies of the project files.

Environment

• Operating System: macOS 10.13
• JDK version: multiple
• Visual Studio Code version: Version 1.27.1 (1.27.1)
• Java extension version: 0.30.0

Steps To Reproduce

1. Open any kind of project, even non-java ones (mixed), click on any .java file
2. Watch .class files being generated in your bin directory, kotlin files being copied there as-is (which doesn't make any sense), other resources being copied there without any reason.

Current Result

Many files are copied to ./bin/ without any reason to do so.

Expected Result

No files are created, compiled, copied without developer's consent!

Additional Informations

The extension uses jdt_ws which creates these files. I don't want these files to be there, because:

1. I use docker.
2. I don't use vscode for java, I use it for other parts of the project.
3. I compile the java and kotlin files using gradle, to build folder, with multiple other build configuration options not reflected by vscode-java or jdt_ws.
4. The generated files are useless.
5. This extra compilation step burdens battery life and SSD wear.
6. It just doesn't make any sense.

I didn't even know that I have vscode-java installed and it took a LOT of digging to find out WHY and WHO creates these files!

Please consider removing them altogether, OR make this extra compilation step optional (opt-in) with explicit configuration where these files should be created.

If I would change the target directory to "build" or "target", then vs code would be randomly overwriting files compiled by docker/IDEA/gradle.

They might even be compiled with different version of Java (and JDK)!

[daliborfilus]

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that this extension exists, it surely looks useful. But it was activated by default and this default "bin behavior" is totally unexpected and uwanted.

[akaroml]

@Eskibear please take a look as a part of the effort of handling temp files.

[nik9000]

I've been using this extension for about 9 months full time. A week or two ago these bin directories started popping up. We usually move all of Eclipse's gradle stuff over to a directory that we've gitignored. I'm not sure what has broken, but these bin directories are overwriting directories where we put things and breaking normal gradle runs. At this point the plugin I just have to uninstall the plugin.

[nik9000]

A week or two ago

I suspect me seeing this issue late might have something to do with not upgrading very quickly. I'm not sure though.

[tonny008]

right click pom.xml and update project configuration

this will generate the .project .classpath .settings files. it seems that the latest version will only generate .project by default. the class file will output to bin folder if there's no .classpath file

[ewired]

I solved this issue on Ubuntu by editing the .classpath XML file, replacing all bin/ with build/temp/ (just to use an example that was already gitignored for my convenience). Before doing that, having this extension enabled would make complete copies of Kotlin source files from the src/ folder to the bin/ folder upon saving. Oddly enough, after changing the .classpath file, it copies the folder structure and no Kotlin source files into build/temp/.

I'm a complete beginner to the Java ecosystem, so I don't know what effects this has long-term, but it works for me. Maybe it's worth exploring automatically editing that file to ensure that it no longer tampers with bin/.

The behavior on my setup contradicts tonny008's experience; I think this is due to using Kotlin and the Kotlin Language Server extension which has its own set of issues regarding dependency resolution. Upon starting VS Code, the plugin would re-create the .classpath, .project files and .settings folder, and also pollute the bin/ folder, and I am running the latest extension version. Even while the .classpath file was present and unmodified, it would still pollute the bin folder. As described previously, I edited the .classpath file in an attempt to make it pollute a different folder, and it worked.

[ckuai]

one more facing this problem. I found whenever I did "mvn eclipse:clean" "mvn eclipse:eclipse" to regenerate the .project and .classpath, then vscode will create a bin folder with all my project's sub folders and files moved under a new created bin folder and build output. Deleting the .factorypath file also has this effect. My .classpath file has no bin/ path at all. output attributes in .classpath are output="target/test-classes" or output="target/classes"

[Unichron]

Same issue here. From observation I think the main problem may be that when you don't have a .classpath, the plugin doesn't import the pom.xml/build.gradle first, but starts building the class files to the default output directory, which happens to be bin.

Making it configurable would be great thing todo

[testforstephen]

Reproduced the issue.

1. Use VS Code to open a maven project.
2. Wait the Java Language Server is ready. (:thumbsup: appears at the right bottom status bar)
3. Manually delete .classpath file, then a new bin folder is automatically created at the root folder, and all non java files are copied there.

Looks like if the .classpath doesn't exists, the Java projects loaded by jdt.ls will take bin as the default output folder. And the build process will take any files it doesn't know how to compile as resources, and copy them to the output folder.

[maxiwu]

Same issue. I don't understand. Maven project do not use anything from \bin.
How do I avoid this from happening? it messes up my git.

[dsculptor]

Any update on this issue? Seems like my scons build rules are finding multiple copies of themselves and conflicting!

[dsculptor]

I think this is a serious issue, and unfortunately the only solution for me right now is to use idea. sorry VSCODE-JAVA

[keefbaker]

Agreed. Until this stops, this extension is basically unusable.

[janbodnar]

This is gross. Removed the extension immediately. Not only it makes Java for Code unusable, it also ruins the reputation of the Code.