Wildcard Project Manager 1.0.4

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Manage paths with wildcards. Handy when a single path holds several projects in its subdirectories.

Sidebar showing two groups and their projects

Installation

Download from Visual Studio Marketplace
Download from Open VSX
Download from Git-Repository
Older versions in releases/

Manual Install: In VS Code press Ctrl+Shift+P and choose "Extensions: Install from VSIX...". Then press Ctrl+Shift+P again and choose "Developer: Reload Window".

How it works

Instead of listing individual projects you define groups. Each group has a name and a list of paths. A path ending in * is scanned as a directory – every subdirectory found becomes a project in the list automatically. Wildcards may appear in any segment: /var/www/*/* walks two levels and files the matches under one expandable node per parent directory.

JSON configuration `projects.json`

[
  {
    "name": "Remote Server",
    "paths": ["vscode-remote://ssh-remote+externalserver/var/www/*"],
    "hidden": [],
    "order": 1
  },
  {
    "name": "Local",
    "paths": ["file:///home/user/projects/*"],
    "hidden": ["node_modules", ".old-*"],
    "order": 2,
    "collapsed": true,
    "settings": {
      "shop": { "icon-image": "rocket", "icon-color": "charts.red" }
    }
  }
]

Field	Description
`name`	Group name in the sidebar
`paths`	List of URIs or plain paths. A `*` may appear in any segment; every matching subdirectory is listed as a project. Without a wildcard the path itself becomes a single project.
`hidden`	Optional. Directory names (`` allowed) to exclude from the scan result. With multi-level patterns an entry may name any level*: `domain.com` hides that whole expandable node, `domain.com/logs` a single entry, and the bare `logs` every folder of that name under any domain.
`order`	Optional. Can also be reordered by drag & drop.
`collapsed`	Optional. Group starts expanded or collapsed.
`settings`	Optional. Settings per directory name (`*` allowed): `icon-image` = codicon ID, `icon-color` = theme color ID.

Local and remote path formats

/var/www/*
C:\Projects\*
file:///var/www/*
vscode-remote://ssh-remote+<host>/…
vscode-remote://wsl+…
vscode-remote://dev-container+…

Wildcards

* matches any number of characters and is the only wildcard. It never crosses a directory level, but may sit in every segment – the path is then walked level by level.

Several levels

Typical for Plesk servers, where each domain holds its subdomains:

{ "name": "Server", "paths": ["/var/www/*/*"], "hidden": ["logs", "conf", "httpdocs", ".*"] }

▾ Server
  ▾ domain1.com
      sub1.domain1.com
      sub2.domain1.com
  ▸ domain2.com

Expandable node: every wildcard level except the last. Clicking only expands and collapses, the directory opens from the context menu. Hide Project on it hides everything below.
Project name: every level from the first wildcard onwards (domain1.com/sub1.domain1.com) – the key for hidden and settings, and unambiguous when two domains share a subdirectory name.
Fixed segments after a wildcard work too: /var/www/*/httpdocs finds the document root of every domain.
Unreadable directories are skipped and counted as a note at the end of the group.

Cache `projects-cache.json`

The cache is refreshed on every successful load.

Features

Sidebar: the Wildcard Project Manager icon in the activity bar.
Configuration: gear icon in the view, or Wildcard Project Manager: Edit Configuration. The file sits in the extension's global storage.
Open: click an entry, confirm, opens in the current window.
New window: context menu or inline action, without a prompt.
Hide: right-click → Hide Project, the message offers Undo.
Show hidden: eye icon on the group; Show Project takes an entry out of hidden again.
Order: drag & drop groups, which rewrites order. Projects follow from the patterns.
Collapsed: right-click a group → Collapse Group by Default, stored as collapsed.
Icon: right-click a project or folder → Icon for colour and codicon, stored under settings.
Search: magnifier in the view filters groups and projects by name or path.
Cache: an unreachable path falls back to projects-cache.json, marked from cache.
Refresh: refresh icon, for directories created elsewhere. The configuration itself reloads on save.

Languages

Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Czech
English (default)
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Portuguese (Brazil)
Russian
Spanish
Turkish

Development

Building, running the extension in the Extension Development Host, the translation workflow and the release steps are described in CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT

Wildcard Project Manager

dipser