Re: [cdt-dev] Associating file extensions in windows?

[Thomas Weidenmueller <thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, from the point of usability for the end-user, as of now eclipse is
totally useless to me. Not being able to simply just open a file or drag
one into the window is a major disadvantage, it takes a lot more time to
use the File/Open File menu item and browse to the appropriate folder,
oh when you want to open multiple files from several folders it gets
really annoying.

Being able to associate file extensions with a program and dragging
files into an application are the most basic UI features any serious
application for windows should support, frankly I can't live without them.

It's absolutely understandable that by opening external files I won't
get any context related information, but I'm working on rather huge
projects with several thousand source files in hundreds of folders
(basically as sub-projects) where I basically just can't and don't want
to create a project for. I just would like to use eclipse+cdt as a code
editor, and I bet a lot more people would too, if these very basic
things were supported.

What I don't get is I've found bug reports about this issue from people
asking for the exact same features dated more than 2 years ago, why does
no one care about it? Associating a file extension with an application
is only a few registry keys (assuming the executable accepted file names
as parameters and handle them over to an existing instance of the
application, if already running). Drag&Drop from the win32 point of view
is less than 10 lines of code. Ok, I know it's Java but since there was
a plugin for this, it's doable, too.

I'm really excited about eclipse and cdt, but without these two
features, it's bascially impossible for me to use it as a code editor on
a daily basis.

Best Regards,
Thomas


Doug Schaefer wrote:
> That's certainly an interesting idea. I know when you install
> VisualStudio, it registers against C/C++ files. The start up is a bit
> slow, though, and I suppose Eclipse would be similarly slow. You also
> would be hobbled by the lack of an Eclipse project and associated
> settings (unless the action could determine which workspace to open up,
> but I'm not sure if this is possible). We open external C/C++ files in
> the CDT today but without project information you don't get content
> assist, open declaration, etc. The fileopen plugin looks interesting and
> worth a look to see what it does.
> 
> Cheers,
> Doug