Problems with new session support

[David Nolden]

Am Mittwoch 27 Januar 2010 22:38:39 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> On 27.01.10 22:12:39, David Nolden wrote:
> > Well, on my work machine I have 3 sessions that don't have a name, and it
> > is totally fine like that. What would I need a session name for, if the
> > contained projects completely identify the session? We can leave the user
> > alone with such unneeded overhead. "kdevplatform, kdevelop" identifies my
> > kdevelop session perfectly.
> 
> The problem is that you can't start the session that way from the
> commandline with the -s switch.
> 
> > We could also allow the user to pick a session using "kdevelop -s
> > ProjectName" by contained projects if we want that option to always work.
> 
> That would force me to type much more letters on the commandline then a
> short session name would. Or what happens if there's a session that has
> two projects and another that has these two + a third one?
Well, I think that is a real extreme-case. The session-support already makes 
it very unprobable that this happens, by reminding that there already is 
another session with a specific project open when you try to open it.

> > What would an auto-generated session name, that would be completely
> > unrelated to its contents, be useful for?
> 
> It allows to easily start kdevelop with a specific session, without
> having to wait until its shutdown, restarted and the projects reloaded
> completely.
> 
> And all this doesn't yet help at all if one wants to rename or delete a
> session thats not the current one.
You mean using the command-line? Well, I think that only a very small amount 
of users will even get the idea to use the command-line to pick a session. And 
even if they do, for most the open above, aka. "kdevelop -s ProjectName" would 
work. Also we can simply say "If you want to pick your session from the 
command-line, you've got to name your session first", that really is no deal 
for advanced users.

But just for this _tiny_ convenience for advanced users (remember: you can 
simply start kdevelop, and pick your session through the menu), we shouldn't 
clutter our UI with "Session 13 - Project1, Project2, Project3", or even worse 
by forcing the user to name a session before he even has opened a project in 
it.

Btw. how should the user even know that "Session 13" is the one he wants? 
Names only make sense if the user picked them manually, and forcing him to 
pick a name makes only sense if we really require that name, but being able to 
pick a session from the command-line is not a hard requirement.

Greetings, David