How to make the run button run the project, not the file, in Eclipse

Posted by Roy T. on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Roy T.
Published on 2012-10-24T10:00:11Z Indexed on 2012/10/24 11:16 UTC
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I'm using the Spring IDE, a variant of Eclipse to create a Java project. One big irritation I have is that when I press the run button Eclipse tries to run the current file, which usually fails because it doesn't have a main method. I've set up run configurations in the hope that would make the play button default to the run configuration instead of the current file, but that doesn't work either.

Now to run my application correctly I have to press the little arrow next to play, select my favorite run configuration and then it works, this is only two extra clicks but it's tedious, the button is small and I feel like I shouldn't have to perform these extra steps. I mean what is the point of run configurations and projects if it still tries to run a file by default? Even more preferably I wouldn't even want to touch the mouse but just press Ctrl+F11, but this has the same behavior. All above applies to debugging as well btw.

So my question is this: how do I make the run and debug buttons (and their short keys) default to the project's run configuration instead of to trying (and failing) to run only the current file? Much like it is in Visual Studio and other IDEs?

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