You mention Vi, but as an Emacs user one of the things that eased the transition to Eclipse for me was a setting that enabled all of the commands I already knew (google emacs mode). Also Eclipse has a great set of keyboard shortcuts to do everything, I normally do my whole workflow without the mouse being on my desk.

For Java work an IDE is essential. For C/C++ I still use Emacs but having Javadocs integrated right there and a nice debugger and refactoring is key.

You might also be interested in this: http://community.buglabs.net/kgilmer/posts/114-Getting-the-f...

Eclipse's emacs mode is nothing like Emacs. For example, it binds undo to F9, leaving C-/ (the emacs binding for undo) as "comment this line". WTF. Of course, once you fix the bindings, Eclipse's undo doesn't work anything like Emacs' undo. It's not Emacs, it's Eclipse with C-a (but not M-n) and C-e.

Yes. Eclipse can be flexible with where the source folders are, where your libraries are coming from, etc. You'll (usually) only have two metadata files: a .classpath and a .project, and occasionally, a .settings folder (for any per-project settings you might change such as compiler warnings, etc.)

Otherwise, you can leave your structure intact and unchanged.

How do I export the project back out to its original form once I imported it into the workspace? Or is it safe to just copy the stuff out of my workspace folder?

First of all: you are using version control, right? Please tell me yes.

Eclipse isn't going to "change" your code at all. It'll put two or three files and dirs in the root of your project. That's it. Your code is the same as it was before.

Yep, using SVN. Not sure I want Eclipse to ride it, though.

If you move a class to another package in Eclipse (using drag&drop), it will automatically issue the necessary svn move command, and synch up the import statements everywhere. That's a 20 minute job done in 2 seconds.

Eclipse won't change your file/folder structure (unless you tell it to).

In fact, you can have source code somewhere outside of your "workspace" and just point Eclipse to it, there is no requirement for the code to be inside the "workspace".

I'm guessing that's done by some method other than the "Import" facility...?

Import will just tell Eclipse where the code is located, not actually copy it into the workspace. Import is probably what you want.