Eclipse sometimes does not offer option to delete nested projects.

[garretwilson]

I'm using Eclipse EE 2025-09 on Windows. I have many multilevel Maven aggregate projects using m2e. The project appears as e.g. example-aggregate in "Project Explorer", and when I open that tree node it shows e.g. example-foo and example-bar.

For many years when I ask to delete the top-level project example-aggregate, I would get a "Delete Resources" dialog with two choices:

• Delete 2 nested projects? (from memory; I don't remember the exact wording)
• Delete project contents on disk? (this still shows)

Now only the second option shows up. If I want to delete both the aggregate project and the child project, I have to select the node and the two child nodes in the Project Explorer tree. This gets tedious when there are a lot of child projects.

Why is there no longer an option to automatically delete child projects without needing to manually select them one-by-one?

Note that in recent past versions this option has been sporadic; sometimes it would appear, sometimes it would not. Now in Eclipse EE 2025-09 it seems to never appear.

(I didn't file this as an m2e bug, as I'm not sure where the bug lies. Even though m2e used Maven to generate the project structure, it is not unlikely that once the projects are created, the Eclipse project deletion facility is agnostic to m2e or even Java. i.e. I would expect it to use the same underlying mechanism for all types of projects, once projects are created; thus this would be a general Eclipse platform UI issue.)

[iloveeclipse]

Now only the second option shows up

When was it working last? Could you please use that version, make sure expected dialog shown and create stack trace?
I'm not sure it was Eclipse SDK code.

I have many multilevel Maven aggregate projects using m2e

I would recommend to report it in m2e first.

[garretwilson]

When was it working last?

I really can't say. Over the past few years the option has appeared sporadically, and I wondered why sometimes it would appear and sometimes it would not. As you might imagine, when I'm deleting projects as only a small step before reorganizing the project to import them back into Eclipse, the last thing I need is more downtime to report an issue, which is why I never reported it until now.

Now the option to delete subprojects never appears, so I finally took the time to file a ticket.

[laeubi]

I'm using this feature quite regular and haven't seen any issues recently or in the past.
So is there maybe any steps to reproduce e.g. with a small public maven project?

[garretwilson]

I'm using this feature quite regular and haven't seen any issues recently or in the past.

Just to be clear, you're saying that when you delete a Maven aggregate project in Project Explorer, it asks you if you want to delete the child projects as well? It is no longer doing that for me.

So is there maybe any steps to reproduce e.g. with a small public maven project?

I'll look into that. Basically I wanted to create the ticket so that I could add more information as I came upon it. (As I mentioned, over the years whenever this would happen it would have been interrupting to the workflow to stop and file a ticket—deleting the project was just the first step before major work! So I never got around to it.) It would have been best had I filed the ticket then when it was sporadic. Now it never provides me the option. I just tried several projects in my freshly-opened Eclipse, and none provided me the option in Project Explorer to delete subprojects.

Now that this ticket is filed, I'll keep an eye out. This is certainly not the highest-priority Eclipse problem. Hopeful I'll stumble over some pattern that might be helpful in tracking down this issue, although it will be more difficult now that it never provides me the option anymore.

[garretwilson]

Oh, wait, I just got it to present me with an option!

When I try to delete globalmentor-base, it asks me:

• [ ] Delete project contents on disk (cannot be undone)
• [ ] Delete 5 nested projects.

Now it's correctly asking me to delete nested projects correctly for all aggregate projects! 🤔 This is so odd.

OK, so it's sporadic again. I'll keep watching it and see if I can pick up on what is making that "delete nested projects" option stop appearing.

[laeubi]

Yes that's exactly how its supposed to work. But to be honest I don not often delete projects, but of course once in a while and never hit a problem (yet). One could of course try to look at the code and see what are the conditions to when to show this or not not give an idea what could cause it to not show up.

[garretwilson]

… to be honest I don not often delete projects …

Exactly! Plus I've always resisted reorganizing modules because it's such a pain and so tedious. But now with LLMs the process of rearranging project organization is much smoother, so I've found myself deleting and re-importing projects more often. (In the past I've found that merely refreshing the project after reorganizing isn't as effective as deleting it, blowing away the Eclipse projects with a script, and then re-importing it.)

Anyway, no need to investigate this deeply now unless you know where to look and have the time. I'll leave this ticket as a placeholder and update it when I run across more occurrences of the problem. Thanks.

[vogella]

I thik you get the option if multiple projects are imported into the workspace. If only the top-level is imported this option is not presented.

[garretwilson]

I always use the "Import … Existing Maven Projects" option, which by default selects the top-level aggregate project and all of its subprojects. I never import projects any other way.