Current Document Group gets cleared/reset when switching Project Groups

Question

Firstly, I'm using NetBeans 8.2 to go with Java 8.

I've been testing the different ways to preserve files and tab group layouts as offered in NetBeans. I eventually found two main solutions from the existing docs: Project Groups and Document Groups.

Project Groups offer the feature of only showing a select few projects in the Projects sidebar per group; however, they do not preserve the tab layout/arrangement and instead condense all open files to a single tab group with lots of tabs.

Document Groups, on the other hand, save tab groups in addition to the exact files last opened. This means that when I save a session with a "split-screen" pair of tab groups, reopening would result in the split-screen layout also being readded.

The problem now lies with attempting to use both features together. Whenever I switch Project Groups to show certain projects and hide others, the available Document Groups remain the same. I can still open the files and tab groups stored in each Document Group regardless of whether or not the files are part of any of the projects in the current Project Group. That is, except for the current Document Group opened.

Switching Project Groups results in the current Document Group getting cleared; all tabs end up getting closed. Moreover, when I come back to the original Project Group that the Document Group was saved in, the right tabs are opened again, but they are all condensed in a single tab group on top. It becomes as if a new Project Group was loaded independently. It may seem natural to reset the tab group layouts this way, if it weren't for the fact that my Document Group has essentially been wiped entirely, replaced by the condensed tab group.

This may seem like an overly specific and niche "bug/case of a set of features intentionally breaking after being misused", but I still wish to be organized with preserving and organizing projects and tab groups separately. Is something not working ideally within NetBeans, or is it entirely just a fault of my misuse? How should I be using either Project or Document Groups best to preserve tab layouts for several different projects?

Answer 1

I know the behavior and also miss the possibilities to run project groups and document groups in a meaningful dependency.

As a developer and Netbeans user, I have gotten into the habit of always setting the document group to "none" before switching project groups. It would be a small help if there was a checkbox in the project group selection window that did this automatically before switching. Maybe a feature request to Netbeans? ;-)