Most of my projects have files scattered in different directories. I am just checking out vs code and am wondering if there are sufficient project management features to suit this need.
Ideally, it would have a way to place files from different locations into a named 'group'. The group could be opened and closed (I mean brought in to view, or loaded into vs code) easily via a pick list. A file could be moved from group A to group B; the file location on disk would remain the same, just it's membership in a group would change. I would want the relationsip between the groups and the related files to be savable so that the same groups and associated files would be accessible after vs code as been closed and the opened again.
vs code looks very capable, but I've only gone over a few tutorials and haven't use it for anything real yet. It does say it's file and folder centric, and OS level folders are not how these files are organized. Maybe there is a feature I've not seen yet or a plugin.
I too was looking for something similar, but unable to find a solution. I did find a work-around though. There is an extension called File Group that allows creating a group of file with full path to locations of each file. New to vsCode myself, it took me a while to figure it out, but worth the effort. Hint, once installed, go to settings, Extensions, File Group and Edit in settings.json to add your file list.
Related
I know that some settings such as imported folders are store on the workspace file such as my-worskapce.code-workspace and some others such as python interpreter are stored in the root folder(s?) such as .vscode/settings.json but these do not include information about opened editors or which extensions are disabled for each workspace etc. Where can I find those information?
I need that information because I started storing all my *.code-workspace files in ~/ and now it's getting cluttered and I want to move them to a different folder, when I do, and reopen my workspace, I see that all open editors are gone! This hurts my productivity as I will have to reopen them and recall which files were being worked on. And another issue is that previously added folders are gone too! I have to re-add them which is merely a redo of work that already has been done, since imported folders are imported as relative paths. If I move the *.code-workspace file to it's original location with the same name however, everything is back to normal, so this tells me VSCode is storing information about each workspace somewhere and it's bound to each *.code-workspace absolute path. I have checked ~/.config/Code/User but couldn't find anything. I've googled a lot using different keywords but seems it's nowhere documented or asked about. I usually make backups of my workspace files and I'd like to make back up of these information as well.
In windows you can find them in
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\workspaceStorage
VS Code 1.75 introduced a new Profiles feature, summarised here.
Profiles store information such as user settings, installed extensions and the current layout of panels etc.
You can export/import profiles to/from a Github gist or a local file. Different profiles are associated with each workspace.
Profiles won't resolve all your immediate issues, but may give you more flexibility in the future.
In Visual Studio Code 1.68.1. under Ubuntu 22.04, whenever I try to refactor (rename, F2) a variable, it searches through all the files under the project tree. Then it suggests in the preview the ones that are actually involved. It's correct, but exploring all the files may take a lot of time.
Is there a way to tell VSC to look at the user source files only? I mean the ones under include and src? Or, even better, select (or exclude) directories for refactoring?
I read this question, but it's related to a search rather than a refactoring.
I'm using the workspace feature of VSCode, with two projects, but it's annoying to search for a file in the front-end project and need to pass by back-end files to find the one I want.
I'm using ctrl + p to search for files.
How can I search for a file in just one folder with multiple projects opened in the workspace?
Yes thats possible: use a relative path: ./mySearchedProjectName in "files to include"-input
from HERE!
UPDATED answer to UPDATED question
The fuzzy file finder (CTRL+P or ⌘+P) somehow supports prefixing the filename with a folder, such as folder/filename to locate a file from a specific folder:
But, in my experience, the search is a bit lacking. For example, I find it usually can only find files this way if that file has been recently opened in your workspace. It also does not support regex.
The best thing that can be done is to enable including recently opened files by adding this to the workspace settings:
"settings": {
"search.quickOpen.includeHistory": true,
AFAIK, there is no other built-in way to filter the results. There are (still) open feature requests for this, like this Allow quick open to filter on folder names by typing folder name after the file. You can thumbs-up them to hopefully get them noticed.
ORIGINAL answer to ORIGINAL question
I don't know what you mean by "projects" since VS Code only has "workspaces" and "folders", such that you add folders to a workspace. I think you're already doing this, where each folder contains a separate set of codes.
With that said, the Search/Find panel has an area to specify files to include, where you can limit your search to a specific folder. For example:
Here I have 3 folders (proj 1-3) added to a workspace. I have 3 sample files with the same text.
When searching, you can set files to include to a specific folder (./proj2), so that the search results will be limited to that folder.
I've found the best solution to this for me (though it's still a sub-optimal one) is simply to run multiple VS Code instances, one for each folder.
It's a pain to start up, but once you get things going (and hopefully you're not restarting often on your dev machine, so this is less of an issue) it works perfectly: you can search for files with only the relevant ones showing up.
Also, if you want to reduce the start-up pain you can make a shortcut/alias/etc. in your operating system that starts both at once.
I've been searching and searching for what the purpose is for a workspace. I've asked this question in stack chats but no one seems to know.
I know workspaces are local copies of solutions and you can switch between them when testing different things on the same projects but with different branches but I can do that with standard folders as well. So I can't figure out what the advantages and disadvantages are of using workspaces over normal folders. Is having different settings for each workspace the only advantage?
The only other obvious thing I see is shown in the screenshot but that a workspace is shown as a single "Code Workspace" file with no folder structure even though it does have one while standard folders have the structure and shows all contents.
I found this article on stack and it's kinda relevant but not as specific and it's unanswered. So instead of setting a bounty I thought I'd ask exactly what I was looking for. Asking about workspaces with settings vs user settings.
Two things which makes Workspace different from standard folders -
Like the other answer you linked to, you can have workspace based settings
In one Workspace you can open different folders which are not necessarily in the root folder which you open first.
In addition to workspace-based settings, workspaces can act like aliases that can link to a root folder (sort of like Dreamweaver's Sites feature). So you can keep a centralized folder/collection of all your workspaces in one place for easy navigation (a folder named VSC-Workspaces for example), yet they can point to and open work folders that may be saved in different locations on your hard drive, since they might be websites or python files, etc.
When doing iOS programming, it is interesting that in Xcode (4.3.2), we can create groups, such as a group call Images, and add files to it (either as a link or choose "Copy items into group's folder"). So it looks like a real folder in the navigator, and it even mentions "copy into ... group's folder", but in fact there is no folder. All added files are in the same location as the .m and .h files.
Why would we want Groups, but not real folder? Is there advantage of Groups over the use of a folder?
This is a pet peeve of mine.
I recommend, making the folder in your file system, where you have your project files, then drag that folder into Xcode where you want the group. It will act like any other group, but now be linked to the folder on the file system. Adding files to that group in Xcode now adds them to the folder in the file system.
Much cleaner way of working and helps when locating files in big projects. Keeps git cleaner too.
Update for Xcode 9:
Once you have the groups in Xcode matching the directory structure on disk, moving a file from one group to another in Xcode will now move the file correctly on disk to match.
Note: In Xcode 10, the default behavior now creates a linked folder when you create a new group. The information below still applies otherwise.
The recommended way to organize files is via groups, because it's more flexible than creating directories, and allows you to create complex file hierarchies while maintaining a totally different file hierarchy on the file system. It's simply an organization tool. That said, it is possible to turn groups into folder references, or create them initially as folder references.
Furthermore, using groups instead of folder references gives you greater flexibility if you need to change where things are in the file system - say you have a common folder of code that you use in a bunch of different projects. Groups allow you to organize the files inside of projects as if they were in the projects, while still maintaining one copy of the code in a central location. And yes, you can do this with folder references as well, but groups are much more flexible if you later want to add other things to the same group but don't want them to be added to that common folder.
If you want to link a group to a folder, click on the group in the project file tree and hit command+option+1. Below the drop down that'll say something like "Path: Relative to Group" on the right, there's a little white square with a grey border around it kinda icon next to the word "none". Clicking on this and then selecting/creating a folder will bind the group to the folder.
Furthermore, when you drag a folder into Xcode, it will ask you if you want it to be a group or a folder reference:
There is a Command Line Tool - "synx"
available in github that do exactly what you need.
It reorganizes Xcode project folder in finder to match Xcode groups in project.
You can find it here:
https://github.com/venmo/synx
UPDATE: XCode 9 supports this feature by default. So, no need to use other tools anymore!