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RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with add/exclude children of FFS

Please count me in for such a meeting.

===========================

Chris Recoskie
Team Lead, IBM CDT Team
IBM Toronto
http://www.eclipse.org/cdt



                                                                       
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             03/10/2008 10:27                                      Subject
             AM                        RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with 
                                       add/exclude children of FFS     
                                                                       
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Copying the platform-core-dev folks too. Is there someone from the Platform
who could attend a meeting at EclipseCon about flexible file systems. John
A, will you be there? John is Mr. EFS and we can use his guidance.

Thanks,
Doug.

From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Ken Ryall
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 5:08 PM
To: CDT General developers list.
Subject: Re: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with add/exclude children of FFS

Doug,

Can we get together at EclipseCon to discuss this issue specifically? Do
you know the right platform people to invite to the meeting? We really need
to piece together a plan.

I?m sure you have enough to do so if you can tell me who to recruit I can
help organize the meeting.

Thanks - Ken

From: "ext Schaefer, Doug" <Doug.Schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:44:57 -0800
To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with add/exclude children of FFS

So, you know. The more I think about what you guys are saying, I'm
realizing that the EFS solution probably is the right one. The objective
should be to turn the IResource tree into a logical project view and to
remove all notions that it represents physical file layout. That
unfortunately starts with the .project and .cproject files, but I think
there are tricks we can do there. The .settings may be harder but let me
sleep on that.

At any rate, this has piqued my interest again and I'll work on reviving it
and see where it goes. I'll try to get a prototype working by EclipseCon so
we can talk about it more concretely.

Cheers,
Doug

From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Brunauer, Walter
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 8:53 AM
To: CDT General developers list.
Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with add/exclude children of FFS

Hi Warren,

well, the confusion my origin from the different meanings of what project
setup is: for me, project setup is not equal to build setup. I.e., on our
projects, the build setup is an independent step from the project setup. We
intentionally separated this to overcome all kind of issues you obviously
experienced as well. And this is how we see it:

1. Create a project at the desired location (everything beneath this root
location is part of the project, but it can be an empty project just as
well with linked resources added to it later). By default, the build setup
is identical to the project content (there is one build target,
linking/archiving everything together).

2. If (a) specific build setup(s) are needed, it is possible to specify as
many build targets with arbitrary contents as desired. This approach
separates the physical file system layout from logical build layouts, and
it even works beyond project boundaries. IOW, no matter from where source
files are pulled in (the same projects, nested projects, outer projects,
sibling projects), one is able to specify any build setup exactly are
needed, as long as all source files are known to Eclipse (as resources).

HTH,

Walter



      From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
      mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
      Warren.Paul@xxxxxxxxx
      Sent: Freitag, 15. Februar 2008  14:51
      To: cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
      Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First  gotcha with add/exclude children of FFS



      Hi Walter,



      I forgot all about the absolute paths issue with linked  resources.
      I'll update the wiki.



      I'm a bit confused about your comment about this not  being a project
      setup issue.  We have our own builder as well, and it  will happily
      build whatever the build description says, whether those files  are
      under the project root or not.  We even have our own project explorer
      view which shows a logical representation of the project rather than
      the  physical file system layout.  But we still run into a lot of
      issues when  files are not under the project root - that is, when you
      can't get an IFile  for them.



      We have a wide range of user types from small application  developers
      to large system developers.  In many cases, a users code base
      consists of hundreds of directories with thousands of source files.
      In  such a source base, there are many hundreds of build artifacts
      and almost as  many "logical projects".  It is a huge problem for
      these users to be able  to create projects currently.  They will
      typically have a few projects  going at a time, but many times the
      natural project root for all of them will  be the same.  We've found
      ways to work around some of the other issues,  but not this one.  It
      sounds like perhaps you guys have found a  way.  Could you elaborate
      on how you setup your  projects?



      Thanks,
      Warren



      From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
      mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ext Brunauer,
      Walter
      Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 1:56 AM
      To: CDT  General developers list.
      Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with  add/exclude children of FFS



      Hi Warren,



      FWIW, you did not mention anything about linked  resources and
      absolute paths these persist in the .project file by default.  Again
      a big issue around linked resources in combination with sharing
      project  within a team (even without team support), and one more
      reason why they appear  to be so cumbersome to handle. To me it seems
      many times one has  to unsell linked resources to users: Whereas
      linked resources  are (kind of!) nice for evaluation purposes
      (because, yes, in this case  you might not want to pollute your
      sources), as soon as you start serious  development, you run into all
      kind of troubles. The hurdle to get everything  right from the
      beginning is overwhelming for novices (e.g. its not possible to
      change a linked resource to use a variable later). Sorry, I don't
      know how to  add this to the Wiki page...



      Having said that, the scenario you describe is  really about having
      the flexibility around build and indexer setup, not around  project
      setup, IMO.



      It's rather classic: users have common  code they want to reuse in
      multiple applications - so they create one or  a set of libraries out
      of it, within one or a set of projects. Of course,  indexing should
      be able to handle only code going into these libraries, and
      optionally ignore the rest. Then, they create their application
      projects, which  use the binary artifacts of the library project(s).
      Now it would be great if  they would have automatic support for
      application linkage specification, i.e.  some nice wizard or UI
      allowing to select the library binaries of other  projects to be
      linked in, without the need to specify it manually in the  linker
      options. And probably also desired: during application code
      development, the public API's of all used library projects should be
      the only  thing they see WRT code completion, etc. I guess, some UI
      would be needed for  this as well.



      And now think of all developers in the world.  Wouldn't it be great
      to give as many of them the freedom to choose how to  achieve this?
      Either everything in one project, or one project per build  artifact,
      or one project per module/application/product, or with nested
      projects... its possible. Our commercial IDE based on CDT supports
      all this,  and we did not have to provide some EFS or work with
      linked resources.  Well, we had to override the build system, and
      this is IMO the place to solve  this in CDT as well.




      Again, I don't see anything specific to project  setup. The issue
      around having the source tree polluted with project files - I  don't
      think this is the big thing. I would not leave the Eclipse path in
      this  area at all and allow to separate the project file from the
      project location.  Its a very general paradigm of Eclipse, and I am
      pretty sure doing everything  differently will generate lots and lots
      of problems in all kind of areas  (probably much more than you
      already identified), unless you make it a new  Eclipse way
      (add/change this in the platform, not in CDT, that  is).



      Just my 2 or 3 cents again,



      Walter




            From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
            mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
            Warren.Paul@xxxxxxxxx
            Sent: Donnerstag, 14. Februar 2008  23:35
            To: cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
            Subject: RE: [cdt-dev]  First gotcha with add/exclude children
            of FFS



            I've updated the Wiki page
            http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT:Flexible_Project_Structure with
            some more thoughts on the issue.  It would be great to get
            feedback  from other CDT users - both those shipping C/C++
            IDE's and end users.   You'll see that I'm not convinced that
            the linked resources route is a  viable option.  Maybe we can
            get the platform team involved in the  discussion to help find
            the best route forward.



            Thanks,
            Warren





            From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
            mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ext Schaefer,
            Doug
            Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 11:15 AM
            To: CDT  General developers list.
            Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with  add/exclude children
            of FFS



            I guess what my investigation has shown me that the EFS
            solution and linked resources are pretty much identical. I
            really  noticed this when trying to figure out how to persist
            the adds and found  myself wishing I could add that to the
            .project file just like linked  resource are. And they are....



            I think all the issues that we have with linked resources would
            be equally as bad with the EFS solution,  possibly worse
            because the EFS adds are hidden. The CVS one is a great
            example. I really doubt CVS would work with the EFS solution
            either. And I  don't want us to think EFS would be better since
            it's not in the platform  where we'll have a battle getting
            changes. Any platform changes required to  make linked resource
            work correctly would also need to be done for  EFS.



            So my hope is to save the effort at implementing  the
            add/remove functionality since I believe that's already there
            with  linked/hidden resources. We can then focus on making
            linked resources  work where we need them and improving the
            workflows. But this  really needs to start now.



            So, Warren, you've somewhat started a list of  workflows that
            we'd like to support with this solution. This is a great  place
            to start. I've created a Wiki page to start capturing these.
            Please  feel free to add more information, especially to the
            workflow section. When  we have that we may get a better idea
            of which of the two solutions will  work best.



               http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT:Flexible_Project_Structure



            Thanks,

            Doug





            From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
            mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
            Warren.Paul@xxxxxxxxx
            Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 11:22  AM
            To: cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
            Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First  gotcha with add/exclude children
            of FFS



            We've been working on Eclipse/CDT based products for  about
            three years now.  I'm sorry to say that the project model is
            still not satisfactory for our purposes.  We've tried many
            angles, but  are still stuck with some pretty serious
            limitations.  I've volunteered  to investigate the EFS route to
            see if it will help at all.  Based on  this thread I'm assuming
            it won't.



            Let me give you a brief overview of how our users work,  and
            then discuss the problem we've run into.  I don't think any of
            this  is specific to our users BTW.



            Most of our users have existing code bases.  They  simply want
            to "import" it into the IDE.  Others will create new  projects
            from our templates.  The new projects are created in the
            workspace.  Imported projects could be anywhere in the file
            system.  Often times they will import several projects from the
            same  source tree.  This is where our biggest problem is.
            Let's say the  source base looks like this:



            C:\MyProjects\Project1\...


            C:\MyProjects\Project2\...


            C:\MyProjects\Common\...



            Because both projects  share code in the Common directory, the
            logical root project directory for  both Project1 and Project 2
            is C:\MyProjects\.  But in Eclipse you  can't have two projects
            with the same root.  This is where the .project  and .cproject
            files are created.  So currently our users would import
            Project1 with the natural root (C:\MyProjects\), but Project2
            has to be  rooted at C:\MyProjects\Project2\.  This means that
            any source/headers  from the common directory are not under
            Project2.  This means those  files are not in the project
            explorer for that project, are not indexed,  etc..  We logged
            this against the platform -
            https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=78438.
            Basically if you put the .project file anywhere, but have a
            project root  attribute, this would cease to be a  problem.



            Our first product actually always created the  .project in the
            workspace, and for imported projects, would create links to
            files and folders.  We ran into so many issues with this that
            we had to  change the model.  I don't recall all of the issues,
            but here's a list  of some:



            - Version control simply didn't work at  all



            - You can't make file system changes with  links.  For example,
            if you want to rename a file or folder, or move a  file around,
            you can't do this with linked resources.  It only changes  the
            link itself, not the underlying  resource.



            - Creating new resources in a project with links is  confusing
            at best.  Let's say you have a project with a linked folder
            and file at the root.  If you create a new file or folder at
            the root,  it is created in the workspace, not where the other
            folder/file are in the  file system.  But if you create a new
            file under the linked  folder, it gets created where you'd
            expect.



            - The location of the .project/.cproject files are
            problematic.  Some users will want to keep these in version
            control,  while others won't.  Those that do want them created
            in the source  tree, but those that don't want them elsewhere,
            like the workspace.  I  forget now why this was a problem with
            linked resources, but there was  something weird going on
            there.



            I suppose it's worth noting that the last time we  really
            looked at this was in Eclipse 3.2, so some of this may have
            been  fixed by now.  But I doubt it.  In general linked
            resources are  second class citizens.  Some IResource API's
            just don't work for linked  resources.  Just search for
            references to IResource#isLinked for  "special handling".  I
            suspect that we'll run into similar issues with  EFS though -
            see getLocation vs  getLocationURI.



            We also have the same issue that Doug is trying to  address
            (hiding some branches in a source tree).  This is much less of
            an issue for us though.  You can already reduce the scope of
            the  indexer and the build.  The only real issue for us is for
            a very large  source tree, you're going to get IResource's for
            everything, which slows  things down quite a bit.  There is
            actually somewhat of a problem in  reducing the indexer scope -
            see https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=178159.



            The hidden attribute addition sounds promising for  hiding
            resources under the project root, but doesn't really do
            anything to  add flexibility to the contents of a project.  EFS
            sounds like it would  though.  What I mean by that is, having
            resources under a project that  are real resources, not linked,
            but that don't live under the project root  in the file system.
            I've just started looking into EFS, so maybe it's  a bit of
            wishful thinking at this point, but I'm hoping we could create
            a  project anywhere, and when we create it we pass the URI
            location from our  own EFS.  Then when asked for the children,
            we could return URI's for  files from anywhere in the file
            system, or on other machines even.   This would seem to hold
            the potential for working around the issues listed  above.
            We'd basically have an EFS map from what we want under a
            project to the actual file  system.



            So hopefully some of the experts can chime in  here.  Is my
            hope for EFS unrealistic?  Is there a different  approach we
            should look at?



            Thanks,
            Warren





            From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
            mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ext Brunauer,
            Walter
            Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 1:47 AM
            To: CDT  General developers list.
            Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with  add/exclude children
            of FFS



            Hi,



            after reading this rather long thread, I'll  decided to throw
            in my personal opinion.



            I consider this approach to work against one of  the most
            general Eclipse platform paradigms, where a project is defined
            to be a root directory and everything in it. IMO, the more
            workarounds are  introduced against this paradigm, the more
            problems will be faced, and the  more incompatibilities (or at
            least unawarenesses)  created.



            Isn't the whole problem you try to solve here  rather about
            what files should go into the build (and probably into the
            indexer) than what files are part of a project? I understand
            that CDT has no  separation of what a project and what the
            build input is (well, IIRC one can  exclude specific files from
            the build, but in general, the project content  defines the
            build input, right?).



            In our commercial IDE, we separated this. This not  only
            introduced much more powerful build setup capabilities in
            general, but  especially enabled users to setup build artifacts
            with arbitrary  contents (think of sources being compilable
            with different compiler flags  for different build artifacts,
            build input exclusion patterns, build input  from all over the
            workspace, multiple build artifacts within the same  project,
            reusable build artifacts accross project boundaries, etc.,
            etc.,  etc.). BTW, we call this build system flexible managed
            build - because  that's what it is:-)



            Of course, one can setup CDT projects as of today  to exactly
            contain what is desired (with the help of linked resources).
            However, I find linked resources to be cumbersome and error
            prone, though  many of our customers start out with them during
            evaluation as well, mostly  because they are looking for a way
            to achieve what they did in the past with  other non-Eclipse
            based IDEs, but sooner or later I know of lots of  them
            realizing its much easier to use the features of our flexible
            build  system instead, especially if projects need to be shared
            in a team.  And now think of virtual file systems, the
            potential complexity of  these, hidden assumptions,
            restrictions, etc. Sounds worse than linked  resources to me.



            I guess, the point I am trying to make is:  whatever you decide
            to do, make it understandable  and transparent (and of course
            as simple as possible to use) for  the user.



            As said, just my 2 cents,



            Walter




                  From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
                  mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
                  Schaefer,  Doug
                  Sent: Donnerstag, 24. Jänner 2008 23:17
                  To: CDT  General developers list.
                  Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha  with add/exclude
                  children of FFS



                  Jogging through the code, it really looks like the
                  HIDDEN feature is what I was looking for. What I haven't
                  found yet is UI  to make a resource hidden or a navigator
                  filter to show hidden resources  (in case you want to
                  bring them back). Is this planned?



                  Assuming we have the core features available to link  in
                  and hide resource, I think we still have workflow issues
                  that need to  be addressed. I like Ken's idea of a file
                  that controls the  linking/hiding. We could have an
                  import/export mechanism for setting up  projects based on
                  this file. A nice wizard for creating the file would
                  also be good, similar to the way the way the export file
                  system wizard  works.



                  Given this, we may be further along than we thought
                  (BTW, the hidden stuff seems to have been added in 3.4
                  M4).



                  Cheers,

                  Doug



                  From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
                  mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
                  Schaefer,  Doug
                  Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:51 PM
                  To: CDT  General developers list.
                  Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha  with add/exclude
                  children of FFS



                  Thanks Michael/Szymon,



                  Is there a bug describing the isHidden  feature?


                  Doug



                  From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx  [
                  mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael
                  Valenta
                  Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 11:37 AM
                  To:  cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
                  Subject: RE: [cdt-dev] First gotcha with  add/exclude
                  children of FFS


                  Doug et al,

                  Szymon is really the person you want to bug  on this but
                  I'll throw in my 2 cents ;-)  First, I have to say that a
                  solution at the IResource level (e.g. using linked
                  resources and the new  hidden folder support) is
                  infinitely better from a repository provider  perspective
                  than an EFS based solution.  You may not get all the Team
                  support you want at the IResource level but a solution at
                  the EFS level  would certainly break the existing CVS
                  client since the CVS client isn't  EFS aware to any great
                  extent. For instance, if you tried to hide a folder
                  using EFS, the CVS client would probably try and recreate
                  it the next time  you performed a Team>Update. It is also
                  important to note that the  Platform does not provide all
                  the hooks required by repository providers  and I know of
                  at least one provider that has resorted to using it's own
                  EFS implementation under projects that are mapped to that
                  provider to get  the capabilities it requires. I think it
                  is important that tooling in  Eclipse stick to using the
                  IResource layer as the layer they operate on  and let the
                  repository provider (or any other tooling whose
                  responsibility  it is to manage the available files)
                  control the underlying file system.  If there are
                  shortcomings or enhancements required then you should
                  push to  get them in at the IResource level.

                  As for the current state of  Team support for linked
                  resources, I think the best approach is to  enumerate
                  some specific scenarios of how you see linked resources
                  and  exclusions working with descriptions of what you
                  need to do today to get  Team support and what you would
                  like to see. It is also important to know  if you expect
                  all the links to come from the same repository (or at
                  least  repository type) or whether a project could
                  contain content from different  repository types
                  (obviously the later would be more difficult to
                  accommodate than the former).

                  Hope this  helps,
                  Michael


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