Re: New feature in project.el: Remembering the previously used projects

[Juri Linkov]

>> Please use a more future-proof format like is used by saveplace.el,
>> for example, in ~/.emacs.d/places it's saved as:
>>
>>   ;;; -*- coding: utf-8; mode: lisp-data -*-
>>   (("/tmp/"
>>     (dired-filename . "/tmp/file"))
>>
>> that allows adding more metadata in future.
>
> Looks good to me. If Dmitry agrees I can start working on changing the
> format.

While using this new feature, I discovered that switching projects
by directory is not quite handy, directory strings are too long
and begin with the same prefix.

I think there is a need for an additional command to switch projects by name.

A clear advantage of Lisp data is that in this case project names
could be saved in the same file ~/.emacs.d/projects, e.g.:

  (("/project/path/"
    (name . "Project name"))

or after implementing the proposal from bug#41572 to use .dir-locals.el,
then maybe to save the project name in .dir-locals.el like

  ((nil . ((project-name . "Project name")

A separate question is how to assign a name to a project.

> Maybe it should be renamed from "project-list" to simply "projects" too
> while we're at it, to match similar files, like "places", "bookmarks",
> and so on?

Indeed, "projects" is much better.  "project-list" looks like that ugly
directory name "\Program Files" that caused much trouble to people on
MS-Windows whereas it should have been named just "\Programs".