Question: I'm finding it difficult to phrase this question well, as there are quite a few generic terms (run, configuration, launch, etc.). Here goes:

You can [save run configurations in a `.launch` file](http://eclipsesnippets.blogspot.com/2007/07/tip-creating-and-sharing-launch.html). (in the Run Configuration Dialog, under the Common tab, Save as a shared file.

We check these in to SVN. The developers can pass them around, and it helps getting new devs running a working application quicker.

I'd like to check these out as part of our build and use them to programatically run the application, the tests, etc, without spinning up the whole IDE.

What would be the best way to run a `.launch` file outside of the UI? 

**Edit**: I am trying to unify the tests run on the build server and the IDE. I do not 
particularly want to give up integrated debugging, which would be the case with an ant script to run the tests .

This is probably more a problem for integration testing with multiple bundles, or unit testing a whole bundle, where you'd like to mock up extensions.

Answer: 
You could also use the shell command Eclipse uses. To get it:

1. Run your program in Eclipse
2. Go to the "Debug" view
3. Right-click on the process (probably the second item in the tree) and select "Properties"
4. Copy shell command and delete the agentlib flag to run in bash
I think you don't need to use the .launch configurations to run the tests. If you build an application using the Eclipse Build System, then you can use the AntRunner application from Eclipse to run your units tests. This doesn't start the whole IDE.

[This article describes how to run the tests during your build process](http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-PDE-Automation/automation.html). With this process, you use a special "Test" Eclipse and load the plugins you want to test.