In the webpage "Loading and Running a Model", it says:

You can save the model directly to your project or copy it to the desktop and drag it into the project.

I have this metaABM file that I've downloaded into the toplevel directory of the project in workspace. I don't have a desktop, so the instruction about dragging it into the project makes no sense. It doesn't appear within the project files, it presumably needs to be registered somehow with the project.

I can open the metaABM file using top menu open file. This opens the file into a new pane to the right of the package explorer, but I can't drag this to the project, and copy/paste just says "cannot paste clipboard into selected elements". There is no "add file", or "open file" menu item attached to the project - the only option is "new file" for creating a completely new file.

What do I do? This is driving me nuts! I thought this was supposed to be easy.

I found under "new file" a "link to another file" option under the "Advanced" tab. I created a link the metaABM file in question, and not only did I get a link, but the original file mysteriously appeared in the project.

It seems that eclipse has a peculiar update policy.

Its this sort of crap that turns me off these all singing all, all dancing systems. Visual Studio drives me nuts for the same reasons.

I found under "new file" a "link to another file" option under the "Advanced" tab. I created a link the metaABM file in question, and not only did I get a link, but the original file mysteriously appeared in the project.

It seems that eclipse has a peculiar update policy.

Its this sort of crap that turns me off these all singing all, all dancing systems. Visual Studio drives me nuts for the same reasons.

Are you using Linux? This is the only environment I can think of offhand that might not support drag and drop for files seamlessly.

Eclipse updates for "linked" files sux, umm, isn't that great. You really don't want to do it that way. Basically, all you need to do is ensure that the .metaabm file exists *somewhere* (in the example in the root) of your project. You can use any method to get it there, even cmd line "cp ... [your project directory]" . But if you do do that from an external source, you will need to let Eclipse know. You can do this by right-clicking on the project and selecting "Refresh" or F5.

Nor will File Open do anything - that simply uses the Eclipse editor, but the file needs to be a part of a metaABM project. (I have added support back in for manually invoking model generation for next release.) OTOH I heartily agree that Eclipse can be fiddly with this stuff. While I initially resisted it, I now find that absent some frustrations it is very efficient -- much more so than Visual Studio. [Yuck] For example, merely saving a file will generate the code and build it.