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  1. NetBeans
  2. NETBEANS-4495

[Usability] Provide empty project template / importing existing code bases in more unusual languages is very confusing

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    • Improvement
    • Status: Open
    • Major
    • Resolution: Unresolved
    • 12.0
    • None
    • None

    Description

      The current new project dialog to me has this odd feel of wanting to 1. make me use some pre-existing template (I don't, I already have a code base), and 2. make me use one of the few languages or things to write that NetBeans somehow thinks are what I should be coding. This approach seems to work somewhat directly against the recent merging of LSP support for letting people just code what and however they want, and against people who may want to use NetBeans for more obscure things in particular.

      I get that for Code Insight, you may want to know what type of project the user is working on. However the current rigid limited template list has a tendency to breaks down in corner cases, even if you ignore LSP/obscure languages: e,g, many languages might be mixed in one project, making anything like "Java Project" or whatever a bad match anyway. There have to be better ways, e.g. letting the user pick the Code Insight support to enable later, or auto-detecting it based on file extensions present as files are added in.

      Therefore, I suggest the top entry in the new project dialog should be a "Generic Category" with an "Empty Project" entry. (And I'm not suggesting to REMOVE the template offerings below, it's just that for some use cases making users go through some fixed templating choice just seems too rigid. I am just suggesting a way more obvious way to bypass them.)

      If the given option is already present and I missed it I apologize for this unnecessary ticket.

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            Unassigned Unassigned
            ell1e ell1e
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              Updated: