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I've been asked to take ownership of an old code base. There are a lot of unusual things in the git repo including loads directories called ".metadata". Each of these directories contains a one or more properties files that defines the following fields:

  • version
  • relpath
  • project
  • project-uid

Does anybody know what a .metadata directory is for and Can I delete them?

My best guess is that somebody has included loads of files is source control are not required any more. Maybe the source control system was migrated? Maybe it's from an old IDE?

BTW - I have tried to use Google to find out, but any searches that contain directory ".metadata" appear to ignore the leading dot in ".metadata". Consequently I'm getting thousands of links to pages that tell me what the ls command does or the various ways or reading the same sort of information if different programming languages. :-/

Stormcloud
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    What type of code (language, build scripts, ...) is in the repository? – Robert Oct 22 '21 at 20:02
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    Yes it is likely related to an old IDE (if you are positive that they are not used by your current IDE). IDEs use "Projects" to group code files and store information about how to compile the executable(s). `.metadata` is going to be difficult to find info on, as its a very common thing to name a directory containing metadata.... – Frank Thomas Oct 23 '21 at 00:59
  • @Robert, It's largely Java with some bash, SQL, Maven and a few other things – Stormcloud Oct 26 '21 at 08:23
  • Eclipse creates in it's workspace a directory named `.metadata`. It should contain a `version.ini`. Assuming you are using Windows Explorer with disabled filename extensions this would match. The other files do not really match. – Robert Oct 26 '21 at 10:01
  • @Robert. Sorry I wasn't being clear: The files within each .meta directory have names that are almost match the files/directories in the parent directory. For example I've got a directory called `config` and a properties file called `.metadata/config.metadata-dir`. Each of these properties files define a set of properties that have keys that include 'version' , 'relpath' etc. Some, but not all, of them have addition keys like 'checksum', 'file-version', 'item-uid' or 'is-extracted'. None of the files are called `version.ini` – Stormcloud Oct 27 '21 at 13:16

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