[Geany-devel] project build dialog - Re: [ANNOUNCE] gproject - yet another geany project plugin

[Jiří Techet]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 03:07, Lex Trotman <elextr at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Note to self, read the whole thread before replying to any :-) see my
> other reply plus below.
>
>
>>> Yes I realised a while ago it can be confusing, thats part of why I
>>> want to combine both dialogs into one in v2.0.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, it's pretty confusing. Once you create a project you don't expect
>> that what you see in the build tab changes based on what change you
>> make in the global settings (until you modify the commands in the
>> project for the first time). This makes the project totally unportable
>> because it depends on the global settings of the current instance of
>> geany. So if I move the project from my home computer to work, things
>> just can stop working because I have different global settings there.
>>
>> What I would suggest is that upon project creation you make a complete
>> copy
>
> Thats just what I didn't want to do, remember there are filetype
> commands and execute commands too makes each project copy big.

Then I would suggest that there are no per-project filetype commands
and you just copy the global ones. In project you care about a set of
files so global/general/non-filetype options are the ones you want to
change. This seems to be the most reasonable solution now.

But really, think about how this is agains anything the user would
expect. What the user sees is that:

* sometimes changing the command in the "set build command" dialog
changes the settings in the project
* sometimes it doesn't change the project

and he has no indication when this happens (there is no indication
that the settings has been overridden in the project dialog so it's
just invisible). This is totally stupid.

>
>  of the global settings and since then the two are edited
>> independently. Otherwise all the settings is a total mess.
>
> And you program in C++ !! I'd have thought overriding some entries
> only would be easy to understand :-)

Yes, but I didn't say I like C++ - I don't. The language is made in a
completely wrong way. Unfortunately the fact is that it's one of the
most wide-spread "low-level" OO languages with lots of libraries
existing for it and programs written in it. But I really hope that one
day it gets replaced by something like go:

http://golang.org/

But the fact that C++ does things in a stupid way doesn't mean we have
to do it too. We can't change C++ but we can make geany to be easy to
use. I prefer simple and less flexible GUI that is easy to use than
complex "I can do all" GUI that nobody understands (and that's geany's
philosophy at least from what I have seen). So as I said, I would just
remove the filetype options from the project settings.

>
> Seriously, yes the whole thing should be in one dialog so that you can
> see what overrides what and edit the one you want, thats part of v2.0.
>

No, seriously, it shouldn't. How will it work with different project
plugins? Please describe how you imagine the dialog should work so I
can tell you why it's not a good idea ;-).

Cheers,

Jiri