Q1: Is there documentation on the .bbproject document XML format?
Q2: Is there any way to wring relative paths out of the darn thing?

Here's use case #1: I have some code (C/C++, assembler, XML, a few
other text files) in a particular directory structure, all checked
into SVN. I work on this code from multiple computers/locations. I
want to use projects to make it easier to work with, including
checking the .bbproject (which is a nice textual XML format, hence
very nice for SVN or CVS, thank you barebones!) into SVN. The problem
is, I don't always check it out into the same workspace directory, in
fact I often check out multiple copies at once into different sub-
directories. The problem is even worse if trying to use my local
workspace over a samba volume remotely.

Use case #2: We moved the base of the directory structure. I don't
want to rebuild the entire project (several hundred files), so I open
the .bbproject in textedit and do a global search-replace to fix the
directory names. I may be mis-analyzing the situation, but this
worked in the last version, but not in the latest version with the
changed project document format. BBEdit now seems "smarter" and
changes the file names back to the original locations.

It seems to me that both of the above use cases can be fixed just by
allowing the project document to use relative paths where it makes
sense. This could be done automatically (hey is the .bbproject in the
base directory of this file?), by a preference or project option, or
at the very least a tag that a user could manually enter in
the .bbproject and BBEdit would honor and not change edited paths
back.

My current work-arround: I manually rebuild a project for each
environment I'm in and check them all into SVN. Unfortunately, that
means I have to add each file to each one the first time I use it for
every new file. Not only does it duplicate work, it creates
inconsistent environments and also places many redundant files in SVN.

I think that BareBones spent a little too much time making the
projects smarter than it needed to be. Makefiles honor relative
paths; Every tool I can think of honors relative paths. Is it too
hard to make it just a little dumber?

Look, I love BBEdit, so this is not a "fix it or I walk" rant. But
not having this simple feature is really inconvenient and burns time
for me trying to work around it. I suspect the time I save by using
projects is balanced by the time burned by working around it. The
project feature is the primary reason I purchased a full license
instead of using TextWranger, so it would be nice if it worked
properly.

I'm hoping that the answers to the two questions above will make my
usecases possible. If not, I hope that BB takes my post to heart and
puts a high-priority enhancement request into whatever bug-tracker
they use.

Thanks,
- Steve

PS, and while you're at it, it would be nice if BBEdit could open it's
own .bbproject documents in an editor!

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