[MonoDevelop] Re: [Mono-list] Decent IDE for ASP.NET development?

[Ian MacLean]

copied to mono-develop list

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> [Skipped]
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>>> What I mean is if I copy a directory into my project folder I can't 
>>> see it via MonoDevelop. It's not there. This is different behavior 
>>> than I'm used to with other IDEs.
>>>
>>
>> I am not sure, but I believe vs.net works in the same way.
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> In fact, vs.net allows to show all files in its "solution explorer" 
> pane (there's a button for that at the top of the pane). In that mode 
> it marks files not in solution and makes it possible to add/remove 
> files to/from the project/solution from popup menus. It is a 
> convenient compromise between both points of view (manually add files 
> to project/automatically add files to project).
>
This is true - although it often takes new users a while to find this 
feature. Actually to be completely correct this is not actually a 
feature of vs.net itself but of the Visual c# project system. This may 
seem like I'm splitting hairs but it leads into a discussion of how the 
ide chooses to model the project structure. The project systems of both 
c# and vb.net  in vs.net view the project as a view over a directory 
structure. By default you only see the files that have been added to the 
project but you can optionally view everything in the underlying 
directory. Visual c++ on the other hand views the project as a 
collection of references to files. You'll notice that when you add a 
file to a c++ project you just get an new item in the project file list 
-- visual c# will prompt you to copy the file into the project directory 
- or under the current directory node in the solution explorer in order 
to preserve the model. In the same vein adding a folder to the project 
will create a real directory for c# projects and a virtual folder for 
c++ projects.

It looks like monodevelop uses the 'map to a real directory structure' 
model - as the file/folder add behaviour is the same as for visual c#. 
Given that, having a feature to view all files/folders in the project 
directory makes sense. Unfortunately thats not an offer to implement it 
- not right now at least :)

Ian