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Bug 44399 - Expose project description in UI
Summary: Expose project description in UI
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: java
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Project (show other bugs)
Version: 4.x
Hardware: All All
: P3 blocker (vote)
Assignee: Tomas Zezula
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: 41537
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Reported: 2004-06-07 08:28 UTC by Milan Kubec
Modified: 2013-09-04 13:45 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Exception Reporter:


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Description Milan Kubec 2004-06-07 08:28:33 UTC
Each Ant project (Ant build script) can have a
description. UI should expose the description
somehow, e.g. in General node of project
properties. The pane for showing required projects
is unnecessarily large anyway, so the space could
be utilized better by showing editable text area
for project description.
Comment 1 Jesse Glick 2004-06-07 18:25:59 UTC
What are you talking about required projects here? Are you talking
about some project type, or about Ant scripts?
Comment 2 Milan Kubec 2004-06-07 21:44:54 UTC
I know that sometimes I do not express myself well.

I'm talking about project description that each Ant script has. IMO
this description should be somehow exposed in project UI (user should
be able to edit it). And I just gave an example where it could be -
Project Properties dialog shows very large pane/list for listing
required projects when you click on 'General' node. If this area is
smaller some space could be utilized for project description.
Comment 3 Jesse Glick 2004-06-07 21:57:42 UTC
Nothing to do with the Ant module; you are apparently talking about
j2seprojects.

Will leave to Jano for evaluation, but I recommend this be WONTFIX
unless there is some particular reason why (1) $projdir/build.xml
should be used as the storage location for this project metadata,
unlike all other project metadata which goes into project.properties
or project.xml; (2) we should provide special support for viewing and
editing a project description at all.

The only advantage I can see to doing this would be that "ant
-projecthelp" would show the description, which would be pleasant for
command-line Ant users.

Implementation might be tricky since it would be necessary to avoid
reformatting the Ant script when changing the description. All
facilities for structure editing of Ant scripts were removed for D due
to the persistent bugginess of this functionality in the absence of
XML module support.
Comment 4 Milan Kubec 2004-06-08 08:02:26 UTC
Well, I thought that description of Ant project is actually Ant
project "feature" not of the type of project that is created by the
script. Even web project can have a description.

Project description can be useful for any user not only command line
users. E.g. I will have number of different projects for testing of
whole infrastructure and I will need to create some doc "offline" to
sumarize all descriptions of those projects for anybody else who will
want to use those projects (and for me too). I hope it's not so weird
to have some text that describes the project asociated with the project.

I didn't write it must be in build.xml, the actuall text could be
anywhere, but finally something like this:
<description>${description}</description>
could be in build.xml
Comment 5 Jesse Glick 2004-06-08 16:24:55 UTC
"I thought that description of Ant [script] is actually Ant [script]
"feature" not of the type of project that is created by the script." -
yes but you specifically requested the description be displayed in the
NB project properties dialog, which is specific to the NB project type
and not based on the Ant script at all.

"I didn't write it must be in build.xml, the actuall text could be
anywhere, but finally something like this:
<description>${description}</description> could be in build.xml" - no
good, you must have the literal text in build.xml.
Comment 6 Jesse Glick 2004-09-28 17:41:52 UTC
No plans for this.
Comment 7 Milan Kubec 2004-09-29 10:55:45 UTC
I still think that having project description somewhere in project
properties is good idea. It's just part of larger projects as javadoc
is part of code or description of module on AU etc. If UI rep says
it's complete nonsense to have project description I'll give up.
Comment 8 Milan Kubec 2005-01-18 10:25:14 UTC
I'm trying to organize my stuff in netbeans projects and the number of
those projects just raises. I can imagine situation that after one
year of doing it I will have large number or projects and the only
clue to find out what the project contains is name of the project (and
of course reading sources, which I want avoid) and it's not enough. Do
I need to create txt readme files inside the project folder to
describe the project? Or would we use ant built-in <description>
facility sometime?