How can I fetch all dependencies required by eclipse without regenerating the config files

If a new team mate fetches a project, he has to run “gradle eclipse” to fetch all the dependencies. However, this recreates org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs. How can I instruct gradle to fetch the dependencies only?

The issue with recreating is not too hard. But gradle puts a creaetion timestamp in each .prefs file, even if the file was not modified. As these files are also under version control, there is always a change displayed, even if it is only the timestamp. I want to avoid this.