Projects and Workspaces

[jps]

Currently, there are .sublime-project files (which essentially contain a list of folders), and .sublime-workspace files (which contain the state of a window, including open files and their modifications). When you open a .sublime-project, the associated workspace is automatically opened at the same time.

I'm considering changing this, so that you can open projects and workspaces independently. This would then allow a few things:

- Opening one project in multiple windows, with each window having its own workspace
- Having multiple workspaces for a single project, for example, to work on different features within the one project
- Use workspaces without any associated project files

The downside of this is that workspaces would then be exposed directly in the UI, making things a little more complex, and setting up a project+workspace pairing would required an extra step compared to today. Also, it would imply that the general feature of instance project switching becomes instant workspace switching, which first requires users to understand what a workspace is.

Thoughts?

[prmaple]

Keep the old design,

and add a option that user can choose to add new workspace,

when there's more than one workspace associated with one project,
ask the user which workspace they want to switch to, when switching.

..?

then the users who don't understand workspace can do things like old days,
users with requirement of having multiple workspaces can be satisfied as well.

..?

and we can have a set of workspace manipulation as well, like
close all workspaces + open a new one
switch to another one
keep the current one and close the others

[iamntz]

and setting up a project+workspace pairing would required an extra step compared to today.

Probably no one is making many projects on a daily basis, so that extra step won't be a problem for most.

While you are at this, please make an option to allow removing only one project from the recent projects window.

[senzo]

While you are at this, please make an option to allow removing only one project from the recent projects window.

You can remove single entries here: .../Sublime Text 2/Settings/Session.sublime_session (under "recent_workspaces"). Sublime Text has to be closed while you are doing this, which means you need an other text editor. There are some free alternatives which are sufficient for this task

[senzo]

Currently, there are .sublime-project files (which essentially contain a list of folders), and .sublime-workspace files (which contain the state of a window, including open files and their modifications)

If unsaved modifications are stored in a workspace, multiple workspaces could lead to conflicts. I'm sure you have this on your radar, but just in case...

[BestGreek]

I'm happy with the way it works now. It would be nice if the workspace was maintained without having to go to the Projects Menu and click "Close Project". Or at least put a keyboard short cut on that command.

[wbond]

From a usability standpoint, the proposed idea of separating workspaces and projects sounds confusing. I personally think the current system is great and I use it all of the time.

It also sounds like much of the functionality that would be gained is possible right now using multiple projects for the same folder(s) and duplicating some settings in those. I'd probably opt for power users to have to do a little more work to set up multiple projects rather than every user have to deal with managing projects and workspaces separately.

[agibsonsw]

I am anti heading in the direction of something like eclipse, with Perspectives, Workspaces, blah, blah. It makes it impossible to just open a file or folder.

[vistago]

I could see a big advantage here with multiple branches. I'm working on this new feature and I've got like 50 tabs open with changes in 4 of them. Then Sally comes along and tells me there's a terrible production bug. So I stash and switch to master. But now I've got tabs open for files that no longer exist on my drive, and I've got changes in 4 files that I didn't want to have to save yet, and that file I renamed earlier is asking me to save the open tab.

Currently, to avoid problems when the above happens I save all my changes, close all my open tabs, then stash. Multiple workspaces would let me just create a new fresh workspace for master and get to work. And after I've fixed the bug in production I can go back to my feature and I'm exactly where I was.

I think to do this right it would need really good UI. I get the complaints above that it can make things complicated, but I do think there's value here if it's done right.

[iamntz]

I think to do this right it would need really good UI. I get the complaints above that it can make things complicated, but I do think there's value here if it's done right.

Probably something similar with syntax selector (bottom-right) would be just fine?