Cloning and copying files

19 Jan 2011

I have been working with Mbed for several months now.  I think its the best thing inveted since sliced bread. there is just on thing that really bugs me erytime I am working and that is that I cant seem to find the simple way to clone or copy projects. When you want to fork off a variation in a project it seems really difficult, I almost have to start from scrath and cut and paste all the file contents after creating the all files by hand. Am I missing something ?

19 Jan 2011

You can export and import as ZIP files. Export is via right-mouse-click, for import you need to select 'Local machine' in the import dialog. There seems to be no easy way to clone single files (one can only drag-n-drop, but this only moves files, directories or even libraries), but for whole projects this is the simplest way.

20 Jan 2011

Hi Nick, Hendrick,

If you right click on a project/folder/file, there is an option "Save As...". That is what you are looking for I think!

Simon

20 Jan 2011

Yes, this another way for single files - but I think copy and paste is faster in that case. And one cannot select multiple files in the file tree (but at least one can export a while directory).

It would be really nice to choose during drag'n'drop whether I want to move or to copy (especially for libraries it might be really convenient to just take a library from another priject and reuse it, instead of search - for example, the 'NetServices' library I never can find in the library import dialog, I always need to copy the URL from my browser).

20 Jan 2011

Ok - you can clone a whole program by using 'Save As' in the context menu, but you are right in saying that copying a library is a little more tricky.

At the moment, one way to do it is right click the library, select 'Edit library', then 'Save As', then you can drag it into another program. Not the most elegant method!

Perhaps the overall solution is to support copy and paste on files, folders and libraries. If people find that useful, I'll add it to the wishlist at http://mbed.org/cookbook/mbed-Bugs-and-Suggestions

20 Jan 2011

Dan Ros wrote:

Perhaps the overall solution is to support copy and paste on files, folders and libraries. If people find that useful, I'll add it to the wishlist at http://mbed.org/cookbook/mbed-Bugs-and-Suggestions

I think it would be useful.

20 Jan 2011

Funny, I thought this was already in the wish list.

In my similar request for copy/paste - posted last November http://mbed.org/forum/mbed/topic/1433/?page=1#comment-7029 - Simon replied as follows:

Simon Ford wrote:

But the idea of being able to copy/paste a "file" is nice; we'll add that to the to-do list. Maybe also drag-and-drop with shift etc for copy rather than move a file.

It still has my vote. (Along with a vote for a closely-related feature: the ability to either create a file using symbolic links, or include a file path in #include statements - either of which would cut down tremendously on the need to copy individual files...)

-hb

21 Jan 2011

Thank you everyone...... YES Simon that was it. "Save as" is what I was looking for and it was under my nose all the time.

However, a drag and drop file copy between projects has got my vote as well for the wishlist.

26 Nov 2013

I think the relationship between libraries and projects could do with being explained better. There's a danger of ending up with inadvertent "fork spam", trivial edits getting published as full forks just because it seemed like the only way to proceed.

I think part of the problem is MBED is trying to maintain the relationship between projects. A "fork" maintains a connection to the original whereas a copy is generally totally separate.

I had some severe problems trying to make an example program semi-visible so I could show it to someone. As it is I accidentally published it under a stupid name (the folder name), then in trying to correct that I created an unwanted fork, then in trying to clean up I ended up with a project that's a fork of itself.