Projects+

An extension for managing projects. Feature rich, customizable, automatically finds your projects.

It comes packed with a lot of features:

• Groups: if you have many projects you'll find the ability to separate them into groups pretty valuable. Groups can be nested indefinitely.
• Group switching: if you have many groups, you can choose to view only projects belonging to a single one of them. Switching between groups is super easy.
• GitTower integration (macOS): if you are already using the awesome GitTower for managing your repositories this extension can automatically import your repositories!
• VSCode/Git/SVN/HG integration: it can find your VSCode, Git, SubVersion and Mercurial projects too.
• Customizable: add icons, sort groups/repositories manually or by name, custom indentation width, hide paths/descriptions, switch paths/descriptions position, customizable statusbar component.
• Explorer/Activity Bar view: it adds a view for easy switching between projects.
• Extra informations: it can show you extra informations about your projects:
  • Branch (Git): enable the projects.showBranch setting to have the branch of a repository displayed next to its name. You can filter out branches via the projects.ignoreBranches setting.
  • Dirty state (Git): enable the projects.checkDirty setting to have an icon indicating that a repository is dirty (has uncommitted changes) next to its name. If you have many projects the very first time you open your projects list it may tike a bit.
  • Path existence: enable the projects.checkPaths setting to have an icon indicating which projects are currently non-openable next to their name. For instance if you have projects inside encrypted disk images this extension will basically tell you which are unmounted.

Install

Follow the instructions in the Marketplace, or run the following in the command palette:

ext install fabiospampinato.vscode-projects-plus

Usage

It adds 9 new commands to the command palette:

'Project: Open' // Open a project
'Project: Open in New Window' // Open a project in a new window
'Project: Add to Workspace' // Add a project to the workspace
'Project: Save' // Save this project in the configuration file
'Project: Remove' // Remove this project from the configuration file
'Projects: Edit Configuration' // Open the configuration file
'Projects: Refresh' // Automatically find projects
'Projects: Switch Group' // Change context to another group
'Projects: Open Group' // Open all projects inside a group in a single window

It adds 4 shortcuts:

'Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+P' // Triggers `Project: Open`
'Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P' // Triggers `Project: Open in New Window`
'Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+X' // Triggers `Projects: Switch Group`
'Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X' // Triggers `Projects: Open Group`

Settings

{
  "projects.activeIndicator": true, // Show an active indicator next to the name
  "projects.configPath": "/path/to/projects.json", // The location of the configuration file
  "projects.iconsASCII": true, // Use ASCII icons instead of Octicons
  "projects.indentationSpaces": 4, // Number of spaces to use for indentation
  "projects.invertPathAndDescription": false, // Invert a project path and description in the quickpick
  "projects.showPaths": true, // Show projects' paths in the quickpick
  "projects.showDescriptions": true, // Show projects' descriptions in the quickpick
  "projects.showBranch": false, // Show projects' branches in the quickpick
  "projects.ignoreBranches": ["master"], // Prevent these branches from being shown
  "projects.checkDirty": false, // Check projects' repositories for uncommitted changes
  "projects.checkPaths": false, // Check projects' paths existence
  "projects.filterDirty": false, // List only dirty projects
  "projects.filterRegex": false, // List only projects having a name matching this regex
  "projects.group": "", // The active context group
  "projects.allGroupsName": "All Groups", // A setting for renaming the "All Groups" special group
  "projects.refreshDepth": 2, // Maximum depth to look at when refreshing
  "projects.refreshIgnoreFolders": ["node_modules",...], // Ignore these folders when refreshing
  "projects.refreshRoots": ['/path/to/projects',...], // Root paths from where to start searching for projects
  "projects.sortGroups": true, // Sort groups alphabetically
  "projects.sortProjects": true, // Sort projects alphabetically
  "projects.groupsOnTop": true, // Display groups on top of projects. This cannot be false if either `sortGroups` or `sortProjects` is false
  "projects.statusbarEnabled": true, // Enable the statusbar component
  "projects.statusbarAlignment": "left", // Should the item be placed to the left or right?
  "projects.statusbarColor": "", // The foreground color for this item
  "projects.statusbarCommand": 'projects.open', // Command to execute on click
  "projects.statusbarPriority": -1, // The priority of this item. Higher value means the item should be shown more to the left
  "projects.statusbarTemplate": '$(file-directory) [group] $(chevron-right) [project]', // Template for rendering the statusbar content
  "projects.useTilde": true, // Automatically save paths using tilde, i.e. "~/project" instead of "/Users/me/project"
  "projects.viewAllEnabled": false // Show or hide the "Projects" explorer view
}

Configuration

Run the Projects: Edit Configuration command to create the configuration file. By default it uses a file named vscode_projects.json under your home directory, you can change this by supplying a custom path using the projects.configPath setting entry.

The configuration is an object that looks like this:

{
  "groups": [{ // Array of groups
    "name": "Group", // Group's name
    "description": "Just a group", // Group's description
    "icon": "globe", // Group's icon
    "projects": [], // Array of projects
    "groups": [], // Groups can be nested indefinitely
  }],
  "projects": [{ // Array of projects
    "name": "Project", // Project's name
    "icon": "code", // Project's icon
    "description": "My awesome project", // Project's description
    "path": "/path/to/project" // Project's path
  }]
}

Demo

Auto-import projects:

Save project:

Group switching:

QuickPick customizations:

StatusBar customizations:

Explorer/Activity Bar view:

Related:

• Projects+ Todo+: Bird's-eye view over your projects, view all your todo files aggregated into one.
• Open in GitTower: use this extension for opening your projects in GitTower.

Hints:

• Activity Bar: you can switch the focus to the Projects activity bar view by assigning a shortcut to the workbench.view.extension.projects command.
• GitTower: organize your repositories there and then run Terminals: Refresh to have this extension copy your configuration.
• Sync projects: make projects.configPath point to a file in your Dropbox directory to have it synced between computers. Write paths as ~/path/to/project in order to make them cross-platform.
• Commands: Use this other extension and the projects.openByName command to add buttons to the statusbar for easy switching between projects or groups.
• Icons: here you can browse a list of supported icons. If for instance you click the first icon, you'll get a page with .octicon-alert written in it, to get the string to use simply remove the .octicon- part, so in this case the icon name would be alert.

License

MIT © Fabio Spampinato