[Geany] Some notes on Geanys project management

[Joerg Desch]

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 20:50:48 +0100
Enrico Tröger <enrico.troeger at uvena.de> wrote:

Hi Enrico.

> > > Sometimes you might want a file from some other API to be stored in
> > > the project session.
> > 
> > But than I must have control over this feature. I most cases I don't
> > want to have the "other" files in the session of my current project.
> > May be it's a way to manually tag it as "stick to project" (project
> > menu entry?).
> IMO this would be just overhead to what most users will need. I don't
> see the problem, if you don't want a certain file in your session,
> close it. If you need it, open it.

That's exactly my opinion. But why is every file that is opened while a
"project session" is active put in the session list of this project?

For example: I'm sitting in my office working with a bundle of files of
my project. A colleague is coming, asking my something about an old
project. So I open a (old) file answer the question and and than continue
to work. Now I have a file from an old project in my project list. Ok, I
can close it, but after playing with 0.13, there are situations, where
these "other" files appears / disappears together the projects in a way I
had not expected. It's not really a problem, it is a little confusing. At
least to me. ;-) May be I have to use 0.13 for a longer timer....


> "Geany works with files" is the key message. Please be aware of what
> project support in Geany was designed for and what it is: simple. This
> is not a limitation but a feature.
> Geany is a (file) editor. I remember me using Eclipse where you can't
> simply open a file quickly to edit it. You always have to create a
> project and then add a file to the project. I hate that.

Ok, that is a statement. ;-) But than I have the question, why do you
implement sessions in the core application? Wouldn't it be better to move
this into a plugin? So the user can decide to have this "lightweight
project sessions", or a future project plugin. Are there ways (for a
plugin) to disable the current project implementation?

I found this on the homepage of "geanyprj":

 .-----------------------
 | geanyprj can't work together with Geany internal project support
 | and try to disable it as best as it can, It will close any Geany
 | project and make Project menu invisible.
 `-----------------------

> > Whats your way of working with projects / files?
> Me personally: No projects, files only. All what I personally need
> regarding project support can be done (and is done) with Makefiles.

As I posted earlier, I'm working this way too. On my office PC I'm using
Emacs with ECB (and speedbar). Here I have the symbol view, the file
browser and the document view. Like with Geany. But what I'm really
missing is the possibility to either switch between projects in an fast
way (may be with recent projects) or to have more than one open project
at the same time. For Emacs I'm using gnuserv to have multiple main
windows, but this is more a work-a-round than a good solution.

With the current situation, I end up with an endless list of opened
files. ;-) Ok, it's not that hard, but I'm currently using Geany only for
small projects in my spare time.

-- 
Email: Joerg Desch <jd DOT vvd AT web DOT de>