projects.el and nested projects

projects.el and nested projects

[Ergus]

Hi Dmitry:

I am working in a project with a nested setup (like an onion with 3 and
4 levels... VS way). I am wondering how could nested projects be
supported in project.el. I know they were somehow in the past and now
there is the project-external-roots, but I it does not look very used.

So the project root should be the top-most common directory?? Or is
better to use the local/closer one in order to have better scope, and
the add all the others as project-external-roots??

As the original project was for VS studio, I plan to create a sort of
project.el backend for my use case, but I would like to know in advance
a bit if it worth the effort.

Best,
Ergus

Re: projects.el and nested projects

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi Ergus!

On 10/03/2023 15:57, Ergus wrote:

> I am working in a project with a nested setup (like an onion with 3 and
> 4 levels... VS way). I am wondering how could nested projects be
> supported in project.el. I know they were somehow in the past and now
> there is the project-external-roots, but I it does not look very used.
> 
> So the project root should be the top-most common directory?? Or is
> better to use the local/closer one in order to have better scope, and
> the add all the others as project-external-roots??
> 
> As the original project was for VS studio, I plan to create a sort of
> project.el backend for my use case, but I would like to know in advance
> a bit if it worth the effort.

I suppose it depends on what you want from that project, how you want it 
to behave.

If you just use the topmost root as the project root, what will you be 
missing?

Or if you make every nested project to be its own project, what will you 
be missing then? Will you want to do a global/multi-project search 
often? Or do a sort of parent-project-find-file sort of thing?

In the naive configuration, the latter could be done just by switching 
to the root of the topmost project. But if you're going to do it often, 
other solutions could help as well.