T3: Big Workbench Rant

Okay, here’s the deal: For whatever reason, I happen to want to have several versions of my project. Workbench has no Save As command for projects. So I figure, I can deal with that – I’ll just copy the entire project folder, rename the t3m file in the new folder, and double-click it. Now I’m editing the copy of the project, right?

Wrong, Batman. The source files that Workbench opens in the new project ARE STILL THE FILES IN THE OLD PROJECT FOLDER. The result of this bit of insanity is that when I start to edit what I think is the code for the new project, I’m still editing the files in the other copy of the project.

I’ve been attempting to do some stuff in this project for the past half hour, and none of the changes that I add to the code are running. It finally, belatedly, occurs to me to look at the time-stamp in Windows Explorer – and sure enough, the files I’m editing are not the files that are being compiled.

It would be hard to overstate my dismay over this situation.

I suspect I understand the root of the problem. Workbench stores a bunch of extra data in the t3m file, including which files are open and where the text cursor is in each of them. The problem is, it’s storing the COMPLETE path for each of those files rather than the RELATIVE path. So when I copy the t3m (along with everything else) to a new folder and then open the t3m, it happily goes and gets the files in the wrong folder.

Now that I understand the problem, the solution is only mildly laborious: (a) Copy the entire project folder. (b) Open the new version of the t3m. © Close ALL of the files that are open for editing. (d) Open them again by double-clicking them in the Project pane. At least, I hope that will work. I’ll have to check it carefully before I go on with editing my project.

The reason I remain peeved is this: Having just discovered what’s going on, I now have to go back through ALL of the edits I’ve made in the past couple of days and make sure that they’re in the right files. I may have thought I fixed bugs that didn’t really get fixed, because I was editing the wrong file.

Isn’t that just swell?

I sympathize with your frustration - that’s kind of a nightmare. It’s definitely worth adding a ticket to the TADS Bug Database about this behavior.

Ideally you would not even have to rename the makefile; you could just copy the folder and make edits without worrying about anything happening to the original files.