kate's "Open Folder..." feature

[christoph at cullmann.io]

On 2024-02-10 20:04, Waqar Ahmed wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>> ... so I assumed "Open Folder" would do the same, but it doesn't.
> 
> now you know what it does.
> 
> A lot of editors have this entry with exactly this name and I haven't
> seen any complaints about it anywhere so I think changing it will make
> things worse.

Hi,

I think, too, that it does what users of other editors expect and moving
or renaming will not make it better.

Greetings
Christoph

> 
> Regards
> 
> On Sat, Feb 10, 2024 at 7:07 PM Alexander Neundorf <neundorf at kde.org> 
> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> today I found out (by looking at the code) that the "Open Folder" 
>> entry in the
>> "File" menu actually tries to open the selected folder as project.
>> 
>> I'm using kate since many years, and I had never noticed that menu 
>> entry.
>> Some years ago I accidentially dragged a folder into kate, and kate 
>> opened all
>> the files in that directory. I think the warning message did not exist 
>> yet back
>> then, so this loaded hundreds or file and more or less killed this 
>> kate
>> instance.
>> ... so I assumed "Open Folder" would do the same, but it doesn't.
>> 
>> It tries to find a project in that folder.
>> IMO this is not obvious at all.
>> "Open folder" does not hint at projects.
>> I think it should be renamed, e.g.  to "Open folder as project".
>> Or keep the name "Open folder", but move it into the "Projects" menu ?
>> 
>> I'm actually stumbling upon this one because of my work in the cmake 
>> file API.
>> I doubt that any user would ever find out that he needs to "Open 
>> folder" the
>> build directory in order to get a working project setup for his cmake 
>> build
>> tree.
>> I would actually prefer to have an extra menu entry
>> "Open CMake build tree as project",
>> either in the File- or in the Projects-menu.
>> Then the user needs to select a directory which contains a 
>> CMakeCache.txt (or
>> actually the file CMakeCache.txt), and then kate could use the cmake 
>> file API to
>> create a project from that.
>> This would have the additional advantage that kate could ask the user 
>> whether
>> he wants to use the VCS information for the file list of the 
>> information from
>> cmake about the source files (which does not necessarily contain 
>> headers, rc
>> files, documentation etc.).
>> 
>> Comments ?
>> 
>> Thanks
>> Alex
>> 
>> 
>>