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Re: [cdt-dev] Why does CDT's build action require the Project Explorer view to have focus?

I’ve pushed a patch that addresses this usability issue.

 

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=375760

 

John

 

From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Cortell John-RAT042
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 10:01 AM
To: CDT General developers list.
Subject: [cdt-dev] Why does CDT's build action require the Project Explorer view to have focus?

 

Both CDT’s build-active-config action and the Platform’s build-project actions become disabled if a view other than the Project Explorer and the editor are given the focus. This is a real nuisance from a usability perspective; it’s disruptive to common user workflows.

 

I suspect I know why that the Platform action behaves that way, but not the CDT one. It makes sense that the CDT action requires a selection in the Project Explorer view, but not that that view have focus. Regardless of the context an action is given, the action should be able to query the selection in an arbitrary view(s), and doing so makes sense if the action is exclusively associated with that view(s), which the CDT build action is.

 

Before I spend time looking into this, I figured I’d check to see if anyone knows off the top of his head the reason for the current behavior.

 

To reproduce the behavior I’m describing, select a CDT project in the Projects Explorer view then click in the, e.g., Outline view and note that the CDT build-configuration action in the global toolbar has become disabled. This happens with Helios, Indigo and Juno (4.2) . To build the project, you have to return focus to the project view or editor. It’s very annoying, and the fact that it’s been this way for so many years makes me wonder if people have just gotten used to this inconvenience, or if there’s a good reason for it that I’m not seeing.

 

John


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