How to auto-remove trailing whitespace in Eclipse?
The question has two parts, one of which I already have the answer for.
- How to auto-remove trailing whitespace from the entire file being edited? -> Answer: use the AnyEdit plugin, which can be set to do that on any save to the file.
- How to auto-remove trailing whitespace only from the lines I changed? -> This I don't know and would appreciate any help.
Answer
I assume your questions is with regards to Java code. If that's the case, you don't actually need any extra plugins to accomplish 1). You can just go to Preferences -> Java -> Editor -> Save Actions and configure it to remove trailing whitespace.
By the sounds of it you also want to make this a team-wide setting, right? To make life easier and avoid having to remember setting it up every time you have a new workspace you can set the save action as a project specific preference that gets stored into your SCM along with the code.
In order to do that right-click on your project and go to Properties -> Java Editor -> Save Actions. From there you can enable project specific settings and configure it to remove trailing whitespace (among other useful things).
NB: This option has been removed in Eclipse Kepler (4.3) and following releases.
NB #2: The option seems to be back in Eclipse Luna - Luna Service Release 1a (4.4.1)