Eclipse's "Workspaces" (Was: What you use D for?)

[Robert Fraser]

Jussi Jumppanen wrote:
> Robert Fraser Wrote:
> 
>> as there rarely seems to be any need to have multiple 
>> workspaces per user.
> 
> MSVC used the term "workspace" to represent what was
> being created and in this context is probably a bad
> choice of word. 
> 
> In more recent versions of MSVC this wording has been
> improved since the name workspace has been replaced by 
> solution and the word project replaced by item.
> 
> So for example any solution (ie the complete package
> being built) can be made up on many items (exes, dll's, 
> database, help files, image files, installers etc).
> 
> In this context there is definitely a need for multiple 
> workspaces/solutions per user.

Ah, I see what you mean.

Eclipse is very Java-focused, and a few times I've run into difficulties 
with the framework being built mainly around JDT. In Java, there really 
isn't much of a need for this, since in Java your targets are basically 
just a bunch of class files and you use your run configuration to decide 
which one to activate. D, C(++) and other native languages have a lot 
more use for manging a solution with many projects (or a project with 
many targets, or whatever terminology you want to use). Still, adding 
such functionality would be possible for a plugin to do, and maybe 
someday Descent will need to have something like that, but it's 
certainly a difficult problem to solve, both in design and implementation.