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

[David Gileadi]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "David Gileadi" <foo at bar.com> wrote in message 
> news:g0s8li$27jq$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> So, that means there are a few requirements (all somewhat interrelated):
>>>
>>> ------------
>>> 1.
>>>
>>> There needs to be a three-level hierarchy that, regardless of 
>>> terminology, boils down to:
>>>
>>> "Group of targets"->"Target"->"Sources/Assets"
>>>
>>> 2.
>>>
>>> If I'm working on "My Application", I don't want the workspace to 
>>> distract me with all of the targets associated with "My Other 
>>> Application" as well as every other little program I write using the IDE.
>>>
>>> 3.
>>>
>>> The "My Application" and "My Other Application" might be very different. 
>>> For instance (all hypothetical), one might be a GameBoy Advance game I'm 
>>> writing in plain old C, and the other an opensource Win32 email client 
>>> written in Java and Lua on which I merely contribute, and maybe a third 
>>> program/set-of-programs that's some big enterprisey thing for work using 
>>> every damn language imaginable.
>>>
>>> 3A: While some settings should be associated with me as a user (ex: the 
>>> highlighting settings for a given language, or text-editing keyboard 
>>> shortcuts)...
>>>
>>> 3B: ...other settings should be specific to either "My Application" or 
>>> "My Other Application" (ex: auto-formatting settings, certain panels 
>>> opened/closed, certain panels resized differently).
>>>
>>> Eclipse's "Perspectives" sound like a potential semi-solution to this, 
>>> but from my limited understanding of them, it sounds like they're not 
>>> project-specific, and don't cover all the types of settings I'm talking 
>>> about here.
>>> ------------
>>>
>>> If Eclipse's Workspace is treated as a system-wide "user" concept, then 
>>> you have a mere two-level hierarchy of "Project"->"Sources". So you're 
>>> lacking the "Group of targets"/"Solution" level that ties together "My 
>>> Application" with its associated utils/libs/etc, while assigning 
>>> appropriate "Group Settings" to that entire group and nothing more than 
>>> that group. This breaks requirements #1 and #3B.
>>>
>>> You could try to counteract this by treating "Workspace" as an ad-hoc 
>>> "Group of targets"/"Solution" concept, but then not only do you get the 
>>> awkwardness I mentioned in my previous post, but requirements #2 and #3A 
>>> are broken.
>>>
>>> This could all be solved with, for example, a concept of "nested 
>>> classes", or "a project consists of targets which have sources". But, I'm 
>>> not aware of anything like this in Eclipse.
>>>
>>>
>> I think you may be looking for the concept of Working Sets.  Basically, it 
>> lets you pick the projects that are currently visible at the time. Here's 
>> one dev's explanation (found via Google): 
>> http://wbeaton.blogspot.com/2005/11/leanin-on-working-sets.html
>>
>> I always customize my perspective to add the Window Working Set item to my 
>> toolbar (right-click on the toolbar and choose Customize Perspective..., 
>> then select it under the Commands tab).  This lets me pick my active 
>> working set(s) by just checking items in a dropdown menu.
> 
> Do Working Sets allow you to have certain settings set up differently 
> between one working set and another working set (ie, #3B), or do you still 
> have to do multiple workspaces for that? If Working Sets will do that, then 
> that might very well reduce my problems with eclipse down to just 
> responsiveness/bloat (I was just messing around with both Eclipse v3.3.2 and 
> Visual C# 2008 Express yesterday, and Visual C# was noticably faster and 
> more responsive). 
> 
> 

No, I don't believe they do.  Maybe Working Sets aren't what you're 
looking for after all.