In one of my Eclipse workspaces, I have a significant size of local history (I mean the total size of files under workspace.metadata.pluginsorg.eclipse.core.resources.history), exceeding 1.5 GB. Upon checking the contents of the directory, I discovered numerous versions of rather large text files, 5 – 10 MB each, which were part of a project I worked on about a year ago.

At that time, I needed the local history of those files, so I intentionally configured the local history settings with very large values. After completing the work, I deleted the project and returned the local history settings to more reasonable values, expecting Eclipse to clear the local history. However, Eclipse did not remove the files from the local history, and I’m unsure why.

I’d like to get rid of those large files. Is there a way to force Eclipse to remove them? If not, can I simply delete those files manually? Additionally, I’m interested in knowing where and how Eclipse stores an index of the files in the local history. If I knew this, perhaps I could make a simple tool to automate the cleanup process.