Here is an overview of the most significant changes in the context of ABAP core development that relate to the:
Creating ABAP Projects by Defining a Manual Server Connection*
It is now possible for you to manually define the connection of your Eclipse-based IDE to an ABAP system. This will enable you to adopt certain properties like the connection type, message server, instance number, and so on. For this, no existing connection from the SAP Logon Pad is required.
You can create an individual configuration in the following use cases:
More on this: Defining a Manual System Connection