SUMMARY I suggest that the project plugin should add a "File > Open Folder..." menu entry. Activating it should bring up a folder picker, and once a folder is chosen kate should 1. check for .kateproject in that folder, 2. if not present create it and start a new project in this folder, otherwise load up the corresponding project of this folder. The reason I am suggesting this is that Atom, VS Code and other newer IDEs work a lot around this 'opening a folder as a project' concept, moving the idea of elevating project creation as a super dedicated task with entering tons of settings more into the background. I think that .kateproject is a hidden file already fits into this concept nicely, so I think leaning into this would be a good fit!
(Or maybe it should be named "File > Open As Project..."? But I think you get the general idea of my suggestion)
I understand the idea, thought e.g. I just open any file in the folder and the project will then auto-load. Do you think an extra action will make this better usable? Are you interested in contributing that?
Thanks for your quick response! > Do you think an extra action will make this better usable? I thought that'd be pretty obvious. Writing a manual file to create a project might seem simple, yet it is exponentially more difficult than "File > Open Folder" in Atom or VS Code. (If alone because it isn't obvious that this is needed without looking into the manual in the first place.) It's also super unexpected for a comprehensive UI as kate's, that otherwise has almost every thing you may need or not need in the lengthy menus. So yes, I think usability would get a huge boost from this. Also, opening a file to load up a project is useful, however no other of these newer editors out there doesn't have a way to open the folder instead. So even if the project already exists on disk, you're going against existing conventions with providing no "Open Folder..." optoin which is bad for more experienced users as well. > Are you interested in contributing that? I'm going around to see which IDE I will stick with. When I decide to move on, I usually extend the courtesy to at least make a ticket why I skipped on it for now so there's a chance to make up for the roadblocks. Of course whether you decide to look into it at all is still up to you, I just want to enable the possibility of it. (Before you say it's ludicrous to move on due to details such as this, I am looking for an IDE I can recommend to programming beginners starting out. So the initial workflow to get started needs to be simple and obvious. In part due to this issue here, I'd say right now in kate it isn't)
I think one should simply drag & drop a folder on the projects plugin and then the plugin should auto load this folder as project.
I wanted to create an issue for this as well, seems I don't have to anymore ;) I'm coming from PyCharm personally and it has only a single "Open" option which asks for a folder. It can open any folder as project, but it'll mark git directories specially as to indicate that might be a directory you want to open. Kate could do the same but also specially mark folders with a ".kateproject" file in it, alongside git repos. PyCharm also features a "Open recent" option much like Kate, but that lists recent _projects_ rather than files. Having the same in Kate to easily switch between projects would be nice.
Fixed with: https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kate/-/merge_requests/336 Other improvements will follow in future revisions. More suggestions / ideas in separate bug reports please :) kittens@wobble.ninja If you are still watching this, I would like to request that you give Kate a try again. We have made a lot of improvements and I hope Kate will be a better fit this time. We are constantly looking for ideas and features so your suggestions are welcome and valued. Thanks.
I'm on Kate 21.04.2, which includes the commit at https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kate/-/commit/7cf04caf36bb4f49049886330294b58f4664b79d. The MR is named "Allow opening any directory from kate as project". However, that is not the case in my experience, for directories without VCS repos or .kateproject files (like tarballs extracted from PKGBUILDs). For example, I have a folder called ~/tmp/ which does not contain a VCS/Git repo. `kate ~/tmp/` does *not* register my existing ~/tmp/ directory as a project, nor create a .kateproject file. File -> Open Folder, and picking ~/tmp/, also does not open a project or create a .kateproject file. My Projects sidebar's dropdown list of open projects only includes an item named after my user account / homedir. The Projects sidebar does not show any files, even if I press refresh.