Change "Recent Files" to only display files within project

[PTortora]

In the Project Explorer, File >> Recent Files currently displays the most recent files opened in any project.  It would be useful if instead, it would display only files from the project associated with the Project Explorer window that Recent Files is selected from.

[GregFreeman]

How does this not have more kudos? I could use this all the time. It is quite irrelevant when I open a project and the only most recent VIs listed are a bunch that have no relation to the project I'm actually viewing.

[zou]

Project file is XML.

Should be easy to add Recent Files list in the project file.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I definitely would not want this saved in the project. Editor changes like this should not be causing docmods on my project source file -- the paths on my machine may not be valid on anyone else's machine who sync's the project out of source code control. Adding the info to the project would violate one of the major design goals of LV source code files for team development.

The original idea to just filter the list to the current project is doable, but I am not surprised by the lack of kudos. I do not know how all users work, but for me, that would be a wasted feature. If I have the project open, it is far easier for me to double click in the project tree than to go to the Recently Used files list. Even for large projects, I generally know my project hierarchy better than some list where things might or might not be. If I'm using the Recently Used list, it is almost always because I'm working across projects and trying to pull something I just edited in one project into the new project, so I wouldn't want it filtered.

[zou]

All we have to add to the project file is an auto-populating folder.  In that folder are shortcuts to recently opened files of the project.  Should not have problem for team development.

For large project, I might not familiar with other programmer's VI/class hierarchy.  It's hard for me to track down a VI.  A shortcut to a Recent Opened File would help a lot.

And we don't have to wait for NI.  It's easy enought to do it ourself.

[crossrulz]

You opened a file when you didn't know where it was?  Not that makes very little sense in the idea of a Recently Opened File list.  And there's no way I would want that info saved in the project file.  There's already enough in there to keep track of.  Last thing I would want is for source code control to have to be incremented just because somebody opened up a new file.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

zou: Where on disk would that autopopulating folder live? Would you copy every VI you work on into that directory? You have to have something on disk that provides the contents of the autopopulating folder.

[zou]

AristosQueue: the folder can be a sub-folder of the project folder.

You can put shortcut of VIs in it.  Not the VI itself.

crossrulz:  I can't remember those VIs I opened last week.  I've to finish this project Greg leftover, which has 1000+ VIs started 1 year ago.  Most of them aren't my VI.  I've trouble to find them in the project.

VSS is pain.  We are using Git. 😉  We can easily ignor shortcuts.

Here is the plan:

Create a VI, add to the active project.  When run, it loads all recently opened files, filter out VIs not belong to current project.  Create a shortcut in a sub-folder for every VI.  The shortcuts will show up in the project under the auto-populated folder as *.lnk.

To prevent anonying VSS prompt, I can disable it when I create shortcuts.

[crossrulz]

But how old should the VI's be there?  If you have as large as a project as you are talking, then the VIs you looked at a week ago will be off the list.  But if you want to keep EVERYTHING, then EVERYTHING will be in that link folder, making it useless.

[zou]

 That should be a variable.  Everyone set his own value.

[zou]

My plan doesn't work because LabVIEW can't handle shortcut properly.

For those VIs have subVIs, LabVIEW think all subVIs are in the same folder as the shortcut.

That causes conflict.

I just display the list on the front panel for now.