Customizing newly created projects in Aptana

Question

I need to define a model for newly created projects in Aptana.

Basically, I want, anytime, when I create a new project, it adds some defined directories/files (not existing files, but new ones) to this project.

I'm not even sure it's possible.

Answer 1

Aptana doesn't appear to support that.

Maybe you can just create a small external sript to do it for you? Not the ideal solution, but better then none.

Answer 2

This might be a longshot, but it is worth mentioning. Since Aptana is based on Eclipse, you might be able to see how Eclipse would handle custom project templates. It appears that the easiest way to go about this is to actually create an Eclipse plugin that has a Template Wizard. IBM has a nice guide on how to use PDE to create a Custom Template. I am not sure if you will be able use PDE from within Aptana (you might be able to), otherwise, you might need to download a stock version of Eclipse, create the Plugin, then install it in Aptana.

Answer 3

Aptana is based on eclipse, so you could use a combination of Maven Archetypes and the Maven eclipse plugin to achieve this really easily.

1. Download and install maven

2. Create a basic maven project using the quickstart archetype, Archetypes are project templates used to rubber stamp new project structures. The quickstart is a very basic project template

   mvn archetype:generate

3. generate the eclipse project files using the eclipse plugin. This will create the standard

   mvn eclipse:eclipse

4. tweak the pom until and re-run step 3 until you're satisfied with the layout etc. You'll no doubt have to add configuration the eclipse plugin to add the correct build spec and project nature. If you open an existing .project file it will contain the values you need. you can see here how to add them.

5. once the project is set up to your liking you can create your own archetype out of it and use this to rubber stamp new projects in the future.

   mvn:archetype:create-from-project

6. now you can run the generate again and can select your archetype from the list. If its not there, you may need to run this first to update the list of archetypes

   mvn archetype:crawl

7. Open Source your archetype for others to use ;)

Answer 4

Aptana uses (as I'm sure you know) its own 'new rails' project that gives you a variety of options.

I don't think it's beyond Will (the RadRails maintainer) to add a simple text field to that Wizard that would allow you to enter a command-line option parameter. He's always been very responsive with my previous bug and feature requests.

If you want to give that a try, and that works, then I would HIGHLY and STRONGLY recommend that you look into one of the new Rails features 'templates' in which you could make a generic template, then call it through the new input box. We use templates at my current job and they save us about 4 hours of work on each project. They are very easy to use...def...definitely.

If you can't wait for the input box, then you could always write the template then call it from within the command line (see

http://m.onkey.org/2008/12/4/rails-templates

for info about templates)

Unless RadRails three is light-years ahead of the latest release, though, you'll be missing out on a lot of very handy advantages of using a more community-supported solution such as VIM or TextMate. (I switched to VIM from RadRails about 4 months ago and have never looked back).

Answer 5

Eclipse has a Plugin Development Environment. If I'm not mistaken, you can also create project templates with it. Please try: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-eclipse-pde/