[TxMt] Re: TextMate 1 vs 2

[Jason McC. Smith]

Agreed, the lack of Projects is my biggest disappointment with TM2.

Yes, yes, I have seen all of the arguments on here about how 'real'
code is organized, blah blah blah, and that's a beautiful glittery
unicorn dream, but here's reality outside of hobbyists and startups:

Code organization sucks.

I work in a small shop that is mired in legacy code.  Hell, it's what
we specialize in.

Our main tool is in a single massive CVS directory of a few million
lines of code, with 47 sub-directories that analyze and transform 37
programming languages.

At any given time, I have a half dozen client projects I'm working on.
 Each one affects a small subset of the above code, and has its own
hg-controlled client project space.

With TM1, I had a *fantastic* workflow, that looked something like:

1) Make a client project .tmproject
2) Open up the client project space
3) As needed, and only as needed, open up the tool source for bug fixing
4) Save client project

I could easily bounce between states of projects, picking them up and
setting them aside, and each project was focused on a particular task.
 Hell, I got to the point I was creating TM projects for especially
gnarly bugs, one per bugzilla entry.  *THAT* was a godsend.

Now?  It's a ever-loving mess.  I have one file browser open to the
tool source, and spend way too much damned time bouncing around in
there looking for things.  Sure, I can keep them open as tabs, but
that only works for a handful of items.  It doesn't scale.  I have
another file browser open to the client project, and I have to bounce
between the two constantly.  I can't plop .tm_properties files
willy-nilly through the system, leaving droppings everywhere.  But,
since I have to check out the same code base multiple times for
various projects, I have to replicate those damnedable properties
files everywhere locally, each and every time, just to maintain some
consistency.  It's an absolute mess.

TM2's file browser approach may be cleaner for many people.  I get
that.  I see the upsides of the approach, as a developer, and as far
as seeing where it could go. Trust me, I *wish* I had the ability to
wave a magic wand and make this system sanely organized.

It isn't.  It won't be.  This is the reality in every dev shop I've
ever been in, from 400k employees to 10 employees.  This is the
reality that I need TM2 to work well with, and it just plain doesn't.

TM1 was my secret weapon, as the lone Mac user in this place.  TM2 is
a massive, massive step backwards in this one respect, and it's enough
of one alone that I am looking at alternatives, despite having crafted
a series of bundles for our proprietary in-house language and build
environment.

Please, for the love of god, point me to any approach that
approximates the clean, simple, and straightforward organizational
tool that was .tm_project files.  Don't tell me the new way is better.
 It's not, in this environment.  Don't tell me it has advantages.  I
see them.

Tell me how to replicate what was, in my opinion, possibly the best
practical day to day feature of TM1.  After reading this list daily
for several years, I'm still not seeing that information coming down
the pipe.

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 9:55 AM, Randall Hand <randall.hand at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I'm a bit late to the TextMate wonderfulness.. I've been using the
> 30-day trial version for the last week, and got it pretty customized to
> my liking.  Project+, MissingDrawer, SVNMate, bundles, a few custom
> Templates for my C++ projects, etc.  Loving it.
>
> Today I went out and got the latest TextMate2 compile from about 2 days
> ago, I believe, and wow.  That's a huge step backward IMO.  No
> "Projects" that I can see, just look at a Directory (which doesn't work
> for me, my Directory Structure != Project structure).  No support for
> Templates either, it seems, which I just recently figured out and
> _really_ love (great to just pull in a template of my base C++ class and
> "fillin the blanks").  Plus lots of things I customized don't see to be
> there anymore, or are buried in the new "tm_properties" file.
>
> Basically, I'm trying to figure out what to do next.  I was getting
> ready to buy TextMate1, but if this is what TextMate2 is going to look
> like maybe I should evaluate some other tools.  Is TM1 still "alive"?
> Or are users urged to start using TM2?  Am I just really missing
> something in TextMate2?  I'm a C/C++ developer that also uses Arduino,
> CMake, Python, and other stuff, so things like CTags, project-specific
> environment variables, and true "Projects" are important to me.
>
> --
> Randall Hand
> http://www.yeraze.com
>
>
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