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I've notice a few posting in the EC newsgroup about people surprised that files were deleted when the project was deleted. This is only for projects with the user specified a custom location instead of using the default one in the wizard. We do display a dialog box asking if the content of the directory (project location is pointing to) should be deleted (Yes/No/Cancel style). What is causing people to get this wrong? Is the message not obvious enough! Do people not pay attention to the message? Is Yes selected by default? Though only a few have posted about this happening to them, the consequences can be quite severe (losing all your files and no backup of them)! We should not let this happen. Maybe we need a better message? Ask twice (are you sure? are you really sure?) (lets not do this option ok) Make the dialog more obvious to attract users attention so they read the message more carefully? Maybe delete project with custom location does not delete anything in the file system - it's up to the user to delete this manually using some file system explorer?
I think simply setting the default on the dialog will improve the security of this feature. Right now it defaults to Yes which is the killer case. If it defaults to No, then a thoughtless "Enter" doesn't hurt.
see also #6622
A suggestion from John Arthorne...The message I see when I try this is, "About to delete project 'Foo'. Delete all its contents under c:\projects as well?". I guess we could make the message a bit clearer, indicating that *everything* under c:\projects will be deleted. I suggest, "About to delete project 'Foo'. Delete the contents of c:\projects as well?"
I've also noticed (from my first experiences with custom location and from feedback by other developers) that users seem to expect the the wizard will create a directory with the same name as the project name specified under the custom location. For example, in the Simple Wizard, if a user types in MyProjectName for the project name, and c:\projects for the custom location, the the user seems to expect to see c:\projects\MyProjectName. How do we make it more obvious this is not want the wizard will do? Maybe part of the problem is if you keep the default location, then it does create a sub directory with the project name - so the behavior changes depending whether the location is default or custom!
I've thought about this some more, and I have two other suggestions: - First, default button should be "No". - We could consider a preference setting, "Never delete contents when projects are deleted". I can see that some users may prefer this, they feel more comfortable deleting things from their OS file manager. This preference could also be hooked into the delete confirmation dialog, like VA/Java does. There would be an extra check box in the dialog that shows the setting and allows its state to be toggled. The extra stuff in the dialog would likely encourage the user to read it more carefully, instead of the usual reflex stab at the enter key when Yes/No dialogs appear.
I suggest that Eclipse should have always the same Behaviour in custom location and in the default location: the wizard will create a subfolder with the projectname. In addition it is a good idea to put the directory name in the delete Dialog.
Some thoughts. In most cases i do not read messages in confirmation-dialogs. I expect a dialog asking me: Do you really want do delete all (do this stuff) ? YES|NO. So i click as fast as possible Yes. Only if i did activate delete by accident, i think NO i do not want to delete anything. Looking for No and clicking, to get back to business. (here no is different in delete!) Consider to make the default is not to delete anything, just the meta information for a project are deleted, a little bit like in vaj where deleted projects are still in repository. Another step would be required to delete folders and files as well. You could also rename the word contents at the dialog to files and folder, wich is more specific. Developers are used to use these words and delete in association with their files are an !! in mind. To the problem with custom location. I'm creating something new. I fill a field for the name of this new thing. It will be created at a location. That is what the dialog tells me. If you would use root-folder(or so) instead of location, it would be for me clear. I associate the new project with an existing folder. One of the nice things in vaj is, forget your files.
Project deletion dialog has been changed to have separate radio buttons for deleting the content. This avoids the problem with the dialog being too similar to the non-project case, despite the questions being different. The default has been changed to not delete the content. There is no special handling for projects with custom location vs. default location.
