Duplicating projects

[dunkers]

Sometimes I have the same source files checked out in several places for testing purposes. Setting up SE for a project can be such a drag that I tend to have it point at one set of sources then rotate the actual files in and out of that directory! It's lots simpler than setting up SE four times...

So far as I can see, what stops a SE workspace/project being renamed is this working directory stuff. If the project files are allowed to pollute the source then the working directory is ./ which makes all the files have relative paths. However, if the project files are kept in a special project directory then the working directory is an actual path, and the source files then have an embedded path prepending them.

That by itself wouldn't be a problem if changing the working directory also changed the prepended path, but it doesn't - once the files are in the project the path is there for keeps. Could this be changed?

Assuming that the answer is 'unlikely', would it be a bad idea to write an app that did a search and replace in the project files?

[StephenW]

An app to do search and replace in project files is simple: SlickEdit.  Project and workspace files are just XML files.  The *.vpwhist files are also text files, and *.vtg tag files can just be deleted as they get automatically recreated.  I think that is all the possible files associated with projects and workspaces.

[dunkers]

Thanks for the info

However, as well as duplicating projects I might be wanting to pass on a project to a colleague (which isn't sharing it in the normal sense), and he wouldn't want to mess about manually changing paths, even with SnR. I envisage just telling something what the new working directory is once and whatever it is does the full biz. SE could do it, but it'd need to be a macro.