Description Missing name Missing name 2007-05-16 11:08:40 EDT

I'm really dreaming of an Eclipse v4.0 without workspaces.
An Eclipse with a new hierachical project explorer with commands open/close project in the file menu.

There are many problems that came with workspaces:

- with the workspace approach the ide force you how to organize your projects. If you have a well structured project, with folders and subfolders, the ide impose you to unfold all the project to the same level. All of your best practices on project organization are to reduced to zero.
 
   Example: a usual client/server project could be
   
   Myproject
   -> MyClient
      -> MyClientLib1
      -> MyClientLib2
      -> ...
   -> MyServer
       -> MyServerLib1
       -> ...
       
   workspace
   -> MyClient
   -> MyClientLib1
   -> MyClientLib2   
   -> MyServer
   -> MyServerLib1
   -> ...
   
- if you want to see the projects in a specific order you should name your projects with a same prefix ("My" in the example) because they are listed in alphabetic order

- many of the user preference settings are stored in the workspace, so everytime you switch to a new workspace your preference are lost and they need to be exported and reimported.

To overcome these limitations one could use linked folders but in this case other problems arise:
- backuping or archiving may be difficult because you have to deal with several folders in different location of your file system; a real mess for big projects.

- versioning with SCM tools may be difficult too (for example Subclipse doesn't work with linked folders)
   
- some plugins don't work well with linked folders

 
So here is the proposal:
1) substituite the workspace view with a hierachical project view: every project can contain other subproject in a hierachical way (like Codewarrior subprojects for example); 
a native Maven support would be wonderful

2) provide the project explorer with a rapid project switcher (like old Jbuilder for example)

3) remove worksets views: a hierachical project is already a workset; for example a "search in project" could be performed on the root project or on a subproject node; worksets are only a workaround solution to address the problems of the workspaces

4) move all the preference settings in a user specific folder (like Mozilla Firefox for example)

Thanks for any consideration