Sublime Forum

Ideas for using workspaces?

#1

hi guys,

I’m not looking for any specific problem or solution but i’ve always been curious what usage others have come up with for workspaces - actually shifting your mental model from a project to a workspace that is.

i am using a simple Sublime Text project + workspace combo for years, but it is also possible to use multiple workspaces for a project. I’ve tried that since multiple times - it works but i never sticked with it. The reason for this is that a workspace inherits everything from its project and i quickly forget about the workspace i am in. This prevents me from using it efficiently - on one hand i forget about that workspace i could’ve used and on the other once i’m in there i forget to switch back.

Apart from the layout and open files there’s also no visual feedback about what a workspace contains. This makes it difficult to come up with ideas to use them.

Even when used to manage layouts then workspaces are a poor solution. For this it would be easier to apply modifications on the layout only when saved so we can restore them later. Then again, i doubt i have any use for saved layouts without open files…

any ideas or potential nice-to-haves?

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#2

I’m not sure what you mean here; the workspace should have a sidebar that shows you the open folders (though that’s probably not what you meant).

Regardless of that, I also have never really gotten into the habit of multiple workspaces for the same project because I tend to always use the same layout all the time anyway, so it wouldn’t be buying me much.

The first thing that comes immediately to mind as a use case is for gathering unrelated files together that you work on regular, such as to do lists or project notes. Basically taking advantage of being able to instantly recall a set of files to work on that don’t need to be more tightly related.

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#3

the workspace holds a list of folders when standalone, otherwise the project holds that list, instead.
if the workspace is associated with a project modifications are written to disk.

It would be immensely beneficial to me if i were able to add a certain folder to the workspace only. The path can be absolute and persist for the lifetime of a workspace. This is currently not possible with Sublime Text.

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#4

Are you saying you want to have a workspace that’s associated with a project, but which has more folders in it than the project does? What would be the use case for that that you can’t achieve by just having a standalone workspace that tracks the files you care about?

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#5

i’d consider inverted scenario
a workspace associated with a project but having less folders - a narrowed view of the project to focus on single aspect of entire project
like a sub-project? for buildscripts or for UT, SCT, documentation or single component where there are multiple components in the project
especialy now since google’s “single repo” idea is spreading

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#6

Visual Studio - for all its faults - has a very handy option to let you select any part of the project tree and temporarily declare that the active scope. The tree is pruned to only your selected level and any operations act as if only that level and descendants exist.

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