Organization of files in Code Blocks

Question

I am currently working on a medium/large project on Code::Blocks and I am wondering how to organize my files.

First, it seems that creating "virtual folders" in Code::Blocks is quite natural but then on disk, all files are in the root folder of the project and it seems messy for me : if I want to do something outside of Code::Blocks, files are then hard to find. Should I use this method anyway ?

Then if I create "real" folders every time I need them, I need to add them to the path in order for them to be built. Plus, Code::Blocks seems not to like that. Is there an easy way to say to Code::Blocks "build the project as if the files in the sub-folders in my project directory where directely inside the root project directory" ?

I did not find on the Internet how project are usually organized with Code::Blocks, any links are welcomed

Answer 1

large projects organisation

If you are creating a new project, coding a new software application or want to refactor existing code, it's a good to properly structure your project. While there is probably hundreds of ways to structure and while there are many thing to consider, here I would like to give you one possible approach which has really worked for me over and over. This example/proposal is the summary of the years of research I have done regarding this topic, so it's not just 'an idea'

There are three 'main' issues you definitely need to address when organising a project:

Medium to large projects, not to say all projects, should be version controlled (GIT as an example).

medium to large projects, not to say all projects, should be maintained by a project generator (Cmake as an example).

It would be impossible, for a medium to large project, to keep all files in the same physical directory. It is even strongly discouraged (by several guidelines including linux kernel). You should organize these files in a physical logical manner.

An example physical projects file structure would be:

~example/environment$project tree .
.
|- code
     |- core
     |- extern
|- docs
|- tests
     |- core_tests
     |- extern-tests
|- ...

This, unfortunately in code::blocks, means you will have to include all your project physical folders to the search paths.

You can organize your files inside code::blocks in any way you want, virtually too, but if your physical structure is logical, your project should be intuitive to browse!

code::blocks does not allow to include virtual paths.

hope this helps

KR

Hewi