How do you organize development projects on your computer?

I have tried different methods to keep development projects on my computer organized but between work projects, open source, side projects, issue reproductions, demos, and little test projects, it gets tough. I did a quick peruse through my computer and counted over 100 repos (some on GitHub, some not). They are all over the place, and I have only had this computer for 3 months! 😱

Comments

[Alex Dhaenens]

I have different folders on my C drive: ‘Projects’ for my work projects, ‘Side projects’ for my work related side project, ‘Personal projects’ for my personal projects and sonon. Each project has a root folder (named after the project) inside the allocated folder(e.g. Personal projects), which contains ALL the files related (git, src and other files) to that project (since I’m a web dev, it also contains the webroot of that site). Then every root project folder has a different icon (for clients it is the client logo, otherwise it is a related icon). Hope this helps you out!

[Andrew Mason]

The icon trick is a good idea - I’ll have to try that. I had a similar structure at one point that quickly fell apart. I probably need to figure out exactly why it fell apart and address that. And I probably need to delete some projects I have hanging around

[Alex Dhaenens]

Yeah, the icons are a great help and the folders are quite okay, the only issue is that aside from tons of files I have alot of services running per project (a db, an indexing servie, iis website etc) which fry my pc alot, the way I solved that was to by default not start the process (classic windows config) and I crated a star script which I run when I start a project. In the future I might create a ui for this.

[Karlo E. Meléndez Peña]

Icons? Where do you source them from?

[Alex Dhaenens]

I download them onto my pc, but since I am a Webdev I often pick the favicon of the project as it is more recognizable.

[Karlo E. Meléndez Peña]

Ah! Makes sense, being primarily a data developer, I don't get so many...

[Alex Dhaenens]

You can also use some default windows icons if you don't have any yourself

[Kathy]

Great idea about the folder icon! Thank you! I take a similar approach, but I house all named sub-folders in one Dev parent directory on my hard drive.

[Madza]

Same here, actual coding is the easiest part.
Hardest part has always been setting up projects and keeping them organized.

[Andrew Mason]

Absolutely. I find myself fighting tools much more than I’d like.

[Corey McCarty]

I keep a 'workspace' directory in my user directory so that work computer migrations will pick them up. It is then broken down by team name, with my github account name as a team. Everything fits into this for me. If you have too man (I only have around 20) then you could break down by various means such as language or framework.

[Manuel Ojeda]

Well, in my case I have separated in a folder named with the main technology it's been developed.
PHP, JS, React, Vue, etc etc

If I need to check an specific project I just look into the desired folder.

[Andrew Mason]

Nice idea. My issue is almost all of them are rails or ruby and the rest are gatsby sites so I don’t have things spread across that many languages/frameworks. Maybe I could drill down another level and still use this pattern

[Vlastimil Pospichal]

I have main directories:

• Project
• gitlab
• prototype

for different purposes.

[Zane Milakovic]

I have a GitHub folder that I drop everything into. Every repo is top level of that folder. It’s called GitHub because I have been using that same folder name for years and am use to it. It s from a intro to git tutorial when I was younger.

[Andrew Mason]

Interesting idea. Probably the only reason I don’t do this is bc it makes it easier to cd around but I may give this a try.

[Jordan Gregory]

I basically follow the GOPATH structure for everything because I like it.

I usually have an Engineering folder in my user directory, under that, folders for languages, under those, at least a "src" folder, under that, the root VCS name (e.g. - GitHub.com), under that, my user name at said VCS, under that, my repo names.

It feels awkward at first, but it's been the only thing that has stuck with me.

[Evan Plaice]

~
Code

• contribute <- forks
• deprecated <- archived repos
• legacy <- EOL repos
• personal <- my repos
• vanillaes <- org
• vanillawc <- org

Sites

• somesite.com
  • _assets <- raw images, etc
  • content
  • public
  • server

Work

• _assets
• work repo

I tried many complicated systems to separate by content type, language, platform, etc. They always ended up becoming aggravating over time.

Ironically, this more-or-less reflects the 'feature based' directory convention I use for web dev.

I aggressively curate this; as well as my GH repos.

I never fork a project unless I'm going to contribute to it or I neeed a custom fork. Custom forks should -- ideally -- be killed as soon as I find a workable alternative.

I don't hold on to forks of all the projects I've contributed to. Best case scenario, it becomes a big pile of outdated trash. If I want to look up something I worked on in the past, it's all recorded and reaadily available online.

I don't keep a collection of snippets either

My motto is...

"If it's not in production, it's not maintained. If it's not maintained, it's probably not worth using."

I'd rather master the ability to quickly and efficiently locate info on anything. Than be a master archivist of bit rotten code that only I care about.

Digital hoarding is still hoarding. I treat my local setup like a desktop. Keep it as free of clutter as possible so I have more (mental) space to work.

[Andrew Mason]

Incredibly helpful, thanks for a detailed response. I caught myself with lots of forks and created a ruby gem (Dishwasher) to help me bulk delete them.

[Dan Ciupuliga]

I am definitely borrowing this method. Thanks sharing

[Karlo E. Meléndez Peña]

I might borrow from this method. Currently, I store everything by language, but that always gets unwieldy after a while as you have said.

[Tamara Temple]

I hear you on the digital hoarding— it's a hard habit to break since it's mainly invisible

[Franz Nkemaka]

Thanks for sharing your insights Evan.

I totally agree, the feature-based convection is really cool and easy to use.

[Shannon Crabill]

Mine are all over the place too.

Most older "projects" exist within my /sites folder.

When I downloaded VSCode last year, it created a /development/code folder (I guess) so I started putting lab projects in there. I recently started organizing them by sections (/javascript, /sql, etc)

Side projects end up in project folder in /documents.

[Andrew Mason]

Side projects are really my downfall. Do you think you’d organize them differently if you way more of them then other types of projects?

[cem kaan kosali]

yarnpkg.com/package/@eyk/cook

digitalrebellion.com/posthaste/

[Andrew Mason]

Thanks for sharing! This looks cool👀

[Tamara Temple]

These look useful. For organizing projects themselves, I have built my own rather specific generators with Thor and yeoman (or used bundle gem for example). I like building my own tools, but these seem like good ones in general.