<p>I use Eclipse with "external" projects - i.e. projects created from existing source.</p>

<p>Poking around in the workspace files, I cannot find any reference to these projects. My question is: how does Eclipse keep track of these projects?</p>

<p>I'd like to be able to add such a project to the workspace automatically (by generating <code>.project</code> and <code>.classpath</code> files).</p>

Windows:
```
```
<workspace>\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\.projects\
```
```
Linux / osx:
```
```
<workspace>/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.projects/
```
```
Your project can exist outside the workspace, but all Eclipse-specific
```
metadata
```
are stored in that
```
org.eclipse.core.resources\.projects
```
directory
As noted in
the comments
by
tk421storm
, and in
Jeegar Patel
's
answer
:
In order for manual changes to take effect, make sure to do
```
File -> Refresh
```
afterwards.