Now we're ready to get started with some coding. The first step in working with Wing IDE is to set up a project file so that Wing can find and analyze your source code and store your work across sessions.
Wing starts up initially with the Default Project. You can use that project to start your work on the tutorial. If you would prefer to create a new project instead, use New Project in the Project menu. Note: After doing this, you will need to open up the tutorial again from the Help menu, since Wing closes open documents when projects are closed.
To make it easier to work on source code and read this tutorial at the same time, you may want to right click on the editor tab area and select Split Side by Side.
Next, add your source files to the project. You can do this with the Add items in the Project menu, or by right clicking on the Project tool. For the purposes of this tutorial, use Add Directory to add all files in your copy of the tutorials directory. If you haven't already copied the tutorials directory from your Wing IDE installation, please do so now as described in Tutorial: Getting Started.
Once your files have been added, save the project to disk with Save Project or Save Project As in the Project menu. Use tutorial.wpr as the project file name and place it in the tutorial directory that you created earlier.
Browsing Files
Files in your project can be opened by double clicking or right-clicking on the file list in the Project tool. When the Follow Selection item in the Options menu at top right of the Project view is checked, Wing will also display the source code for files that are single clicked. However, these files are opened in a transient mode so that they are automatically closed again when another file is brought up. This mechanism helps to prevent huge numbers of files being opened when stepping in the debugger or browsing files.
This mode in which a file is opened is indicated with the stick pin icon in the top right of the editor area:
-- Indicates the file is opened permanently until it is
closed explicitly by the user.
-- Indicates that the file is opened transiently and
will auto-close except if it is edited.
Clicking on the pin icon toggles between the available modes. Right-clicking on the icon displays a menu of recently visited files. Note that this contains both transient and sticky files, while the Recent list in the File menu contains only sticky files.
The number of transient editors to keep open, in addition to those that are visible is set with the Transient Threshold preference.
Note that you can alter the project display to sort files into a deep hierarchy, a flattened hierarchy, or by mime type. These are available from the Options menu in the project view.
Shared Project Files
If you plan to use Wing IDE in a development team that shares project files in a revision control system such as CVS, Subversion, or Perforce SCM, be sure to change your project to Shared using the Project Type property. This separates the project into two files: *.wpr with shared project data and *.wpu with user-specific data. Check only the *.wpr file into revision control to avoid revision conflicts resulting from concurrent edits.
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