Project Browser is a file system explorer/browser application with some features for project management, built upon a simple Java file browser implemented in Swing by Andrew Thompson.
This application basically is a file browser, featuring a file system tree and a folder content table where you can select and display your file system, as well as a details panel for a selected file/folder. It additionally allows to load deep info of the selected folder with a button click, which enables the user to have all folder sizes determined recursively, which is very useful when cleaning up your hard disk for example.
For project administration of projects of any kind, there are some extra features:
In the projects view (see View menu), after the user selected a folder in the tree and then clicked the button "select project info", the program scans the currently selected folder recursively and tries to find a specific pattern of folders/files which are defined as project structures in the ProBro XML configuration file. These are shown in the table in projects view.
You can define the project structure you typically use with a XML file, which is initially contained with the application with a default project structure. If you want to define your own project structure(s), you can copy the file somewhere and alter it like you wish. The definition can then be loaded via the Projects menu. On Mac OS X, you find the file inside the ProBro.app package, under ProBro.app/Contents/Java/ProBroDefaultProjectDef.xml, on all other platforms, you have downloaded the file anyway during installation. Details on the syntax are documented below in this file.
The use case for me (and the reason this application has been developed) was to scan for DAW music projects made with ProTools and Logic Pro, and count the contained mix or master audio files there. I always have at least one of the folders named _MA (Masters), _MIX (Mixes), etc. in my audio projects, so these are defined as qualifiers for folders being detected as project folders. Also, the audio files and session file formats recognized are defined in XML, as well as different colors for different file types etc., which can be used to show the existence of compressed audio files for example. Also, the folders which have NOT been recognized as projects and are not contained in a project can be shown with the projects leftovers view (see Projects menu).
The given default XML configuration is my personal one, however, you can easily define your own project structures also for completely different kinds of projects like programming, web design, photography for example.
- Basic file browsing (file browser view)
- Loading / visualizing the real size of any files/folders in the system
- Project overview of selected folder, generated by a XML definition of project structure and the files on the system (no temporary data is stored anywhere)
- Compressing selected items with the command line ZIP tool (not available in Windows yet), this can be done for multiple folders in parallel, also showing the progress in a task bar on the right side, which also can terminate the ZIP processes on double click. This helps archiving projects for example.
- Determination of the year of the project, by either extracting this from the project folder name, or by the earliest existing file in one of the project qualifying folders (a.k.a. project targets, see below)
- Project leftovers view, showing all folders which have NOT been detected (qualified) as projects and which are not part of a project themselves
Minimum required Java Runtime Environment Version: 1.8
For Mac OS X (>= 10.8.5), a genuine DMG installer is available, see the project folder ProBro/release/macosx/bundles/. It also contains the project definition XML file, which is automatically loaded on program start.
For all other platforms, the .jar file can be used (path: ProBro/release/macosx/ProBro.jar. Sorry, no .exe has been created yet... However, the application has been tested on Windows 7 and works flawlessly, except for the ZIP functionality which is only available on Unix-like systems. Also, you will need the default project definition file, which should be downloaded from ProBro/release/macosx/ProBroDefaultProjectDef.xml and copied beneath the jar file.
The file system explorers of most operating systems do not show the full size of folders in their overview lists. This file browser can. Just select a folder and click on "load deep info", and you can easily find out which of your projects is eating up the most HD space.
The program can also ZIP files and folders. This is done via the File menu. Select the file/folder and select ZIP from the File menu. The zipping process is then showed on the right in the processes panel, along with a progress bar. You can start multiple zipping processes in parallel. Also, you can cancel each on by double clicking it.
NOTE: This uses the unixoid ZIP command on the command line, therefore this is not available on Windows. It has been developed and tested on OS X, but should run also on Linux systems as well.
Here is an example definition file like the one included in the repository:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<projectdefinition name="Tunetown Projects">
<projectproperty header="_MA">
<folder qualifying="true">_MA</folder>
<file qualifying="true" bgcolor="0;230;230" tabletext="ZIP">_MA.zip</file>
<extension recursive="true">wav</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aif</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aiff</extension>
<extension recursive="true">sd2</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">mp3</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">wma</extension>
</projectproperty>
<projectproperty header="_MIX">
<folder qualifying="true">_EM</folder>
<folder qualifying="true">_MIX</folder>
<folder qualifying="true">_MX</folder>
<file qualifying="true" bgcolor="0;230;230" tabletext="ZIP">_EM.zip</file>
<file qualifying="true" bgcolor="0;230;230" tabletext="ZIP">_MIX.zip</file>
<file qualifying="true" bgcolor="0;230;230" tabletext="ZIP">_MX.zip</file>
<extension recursive="true">wav</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aif</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aiff</extension>
<extension recursive="true">sd2</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">mp3</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">wma</extension>
</projectproperty>
<projectproperty header="_PMA">
<folder qualifying="true">_PMA</folder>
<file qualifying="true" bgcolor="0;230;230" tabletext="ZIP">_PMA.zip</file>
<extension recursive="true">wav</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aif</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aiff</extension>
<extension recursive="true">sd2</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">mp3</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">wma</extension>
</projectproperty>
<projectproperty header="_PMX">
<folder qualifying="true">_PMX</folder>
<folder qualifying="true">_RUFF</folder>
<file qualifying="true" tabletext="ZIP" bgcolor="0;230;230">_PMX.zip</file>
<file qualifying="true" tabletext="ZIP" bgcolor="0;230;230">_RUFF.zip</file>
<extension recursive="true">wav</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aif</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aiff</extension>
<extension recursive="true">sd2</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">mp3</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">wma</extension>
</projectproperty>
<projectproperty header="Sessions">
<extension recursive="true">logic</extension>
<extension recursive="true">lso</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="200;200;200">ptf</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="200;200;200">pts</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="200;200;200">ptx</extension>
</projectproperty>
<projectproperty header="Audiofiles">
<extension recursive="true">wav</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aif</extension>
<extension recursive="true">aiff</extension>
<extension recursive="true">sd2</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">mp3</extension>
<extension recursive="true" bgcolor="255;160;0">wma</extension>
</projectproperty>
<ignore>
<extension>logic</extension>
<extension>bak</extension>
<extension>wb3</extension>
</ignore>
</projectdefinition>The project definition XML file must have the following structure, defined here by the XML tags. The main tag is "projectdefinition", it has to be defined in the document. The first definition is parsed, all others are ignored.
Defines a project definition, and contains all information about the definition.
Attributes:
- name: Name of the project definition (free text)
Can contain:
- Multiple "projectproperty" tags (at least one has to be defined)
- One "ignore" tag (only one can be defined optionally, all further ones are ignored)
This defines the project structure we are searching for.
For each folder or file you have in every one of your projects, define one property, and define the files/folders in there. The files/folders can be defined as qualifying (see tags "file" and "folder"): If one of the files and/or folders defined as qualifying is found, its parent folder will be detected as a project, and will show in the projects list.
In the user interface, the table in projects view shows one column for each property (qualifying or not), showing the count of relevant files inside this property folder. The file extensions you want to count have to be defined with "extension" tags.
Attributes:
- header: Header for table column in projects view. Must be set.
Can contain:
- Multiple ""file" tags (optional, but at least one "file" or "folder" has to be there)
- Multiple "folder" tags (optional, but at least one "file" or "folder" has to be there)
- Multiple "extension" tags (at least one has to be defined)
Here, you can define folder extensions which will be ignored during project search. This means, a folder with one of the defined extensions will NOT be included in neither the projects nor the leftovers list. This can be useful to ignore for example the .bak folders automatically created by Logic Pro.
Attributes:
- none
Can contain:
- Multiple "extension" tags (at least one has to be defined. However, the extension tag can have no attributes here, like in the project properties, also just the content will be interpreted as file extensions without the dot.)
This defines a file name. If this file is found and it is set as qualifying, the folder containing it will be recognized as project. If the file is NOT qualifying, it just will be shown as table column, but the existence alone is not enough for the parent folder to be a project.
Attributes:
- qualifying: If set to true, the existence of the folder qualifies the project folder to really be recognized as a project.
- bgColor: Defines the basic background color for table cells, if the property has been found. Syntax: "r;g;b". See also the bgColor attribute of the "extension" tag.
- tableText: This text, if set, is shown if the property has been found. If not specified, the column will show the amount of matching files, see "extension" tag.
Can contain:
- none
This defines a folder name. If this folder is found and it is set as qualifying, the folder containing it will be recognized as project. If the folder is NOT qualifying, it just will be shown as table column and the files inside will be counted, but the existence alone is not enough for the parent folder to be a project.
Attributes:
- qualifying: If set to true, the existence of the folder qualifies the project folder to really be recognized as a project.
- bgColor: Defines the basic background color for table cells, if the property has been found. Syntax: "r;g;b". See also the bgColor attribute of the "extension" tag.
- tableText: This text, if set, is shown if the property has been found. If not specified, the column will show the amount of matching files, see "extension" tag.
Can contain:
- none
These extensions (without the dot) define the file (or folder) extensions which will be counted in one of these cases:
- If a "folder" tag exists, all defined extensions will be searched here, and the count is shown in the table (if no tableText is defined)
- If a file tag exists, this is not regarded.
- If no file or folder tags exist, files matching these extensions will be searched and counted directly in the project folder, and the count will be shown in the table if no tableText is defined..
Attributes:
- qualifying: If set to true, the existence of a file of this type qualifies the project folder to really be recognized as a project. The same option in a "folder" or "file" tab will override this.
- bgColor: Defines the back color for table cells, if the extension has been found. The real back color will be between the base color (if set by the hitting folder tag) or the java standard table background color, being defined by the percentage of files found by the extension. Syntax: "r;g;b".
- recursive: If set to true, files will be searched deeply inside the target, if not set, only first level files and folders will be scanned.
Can contain:
- none
- No window is shown: Go to your home directory and delete the ProBroParameters.tmp file.
The application currently is in beta state. There could likely be some bugs, if you come across any issues, please let me know.