I come from Mac OS X (10.6., partly because I'm unsure if I like where more recent versions of that OS are headed, partly because (IMHO) with KDE 4.1x Linux has caught up with at least OS X 10.4
On thing I'm missing on more recent OS X versions and all other environments I know of (and I still use a lot on 10.6. is Xcode v3.2's IDE where the integrated editor provides individual windows. For me this is so much more efficient than having a single monolithic "workspace" window where all editor windows have to share a single bit of space that's left over after all other components have taken their space. A workspace window that also occludes the desktop and other applications' windows to which one might want to have access without having to push the whole IDE out of the way.
I know most all IDEs are monolithic in that way nowadays (even Xcode v4+) but at least some of them allow to detach editor windows so I can lay them out on the screen the way I want. I haven't yet figured out if this is possible in KDevelop - is it? Does it maybe have a hidden setting which turns the various toolviews in autonomous individual windows that don't need to be docked to an obligatory parent window?

Subsidiary question, not completely unrelated: is there a way to construct a project manually, hand-picking the relevant files from a project directory (as in a "legacy" Makefile-based project)? The "Project Filter" from the project's configuration dialog doesn't seem to do a very good job at hiding, say, the generated .o and .so files, and that's supposing all files in a project's directory are relevant for an IDE in the first place.

It's not possible at the moment, it is sort of a long-standing feature request though and eventually something like that will be added.

For picking project files, I'm not sure what the use case is -- the filter should already exclude all the .o and .so files by default, no? And it's more or less exclusively about what is displayed in the side panel anyways.

Greetings!

scummos wrote:It's not possible at the moment, it is sort of a long-standing feature request though and eventually something like that will be added.

Good to know but I won't hold my breath ...those in favour of such a feature appear to be a tiny minority!

the filter should already exclude all the .o and .so files by default, no?

Yes, so it seems. But those files still show up when I expand the project in the project view.

And it's more or less exclusively about what is displayed in the side panel anyways.

Yes, that's the whole point ... not cluttering the file (project) view sidebar with irrelevant items.

What version of KDevelop are you using? The filter thing should definitely work.

Kdevelop 4.6.0, KDev platform 1.6.0 and KDE 4.13.1 (KUbuntu) / KDE 4.12.5 (OS X via MacPorts).
I've double-checked on both platforms. The default list including *.o and *.so has no effect, but when I add a *.o.gz files exclude pattern the matching files do indeed disappear from the project view. And no, removing and then re-adding the *.o and *.so patterns has no effect: those files continue to show up.
So I thought I'd test another built-in pattern, in my own "legacy", pure Makefile-based project. I created an empty .moc file (the project doesn't use those) - it didn't show up. So far so good. Then I changed the *.moc filter entry (to *.moc-snip and then to *.com): the file continued not to show up, not after a "reload" nor after restarting KDevelop.

So it's almost as if there's an internal override that decides that certain filetypes do or don't show up in the project view.
Then again I may not be understanding something: the .moc file I created didn't show up either when I changed its extension to .com (there's no reason that still has special meaning for KDevelop, right?).
So how does KDevelop determine the candidates to show in the project view when one imports a Makefile?

Ah, you're talking about the targets I guess (the ones with the gear icon). I'm not sure if the project filter applies to them, they do not actually represent files but build system targets. It's not optimal that there's so many for the makefile manager, and I'm not sure what to do about it. You can file a with in the bug tracker, but I guess that already exists k

Targets - yes, that'd make sense.
But having .so and .o targets show up in the Project view, what's the point in that, what would you want to do with them in KDevelop?
Xcode shows project targets in a separate category, and actually built ones in a Products category, A thought?

Targets are filterable in current master and the soon-to-be-released 4.6.1.