GotoFile Eclipse Plugin - You'll never want to go back!

Welcome to the GotoFile Eclipse Plugin home page. The latest versions of the plugin will be made available here.

News

4/JUL/2006 Version 1.3.5 fixes the keybinding problem experienced with Eclipse 3.2 and later.
29/SEP/2005 GotoFile is now available via an eclipse update site: http://www.muermann.org/gotofile/update
27/SEP/2005 Version 1.3.4 fixes a problem with Eclipse 3.2 M2 and adds a new feature: text selected in an editor when opening the GotoFile search dialog is automatically used as the initial search term
18/APR/2005 Version 1.3.3 adds option to restrict search to current project scope.
04/APR/2005 Version 1.3.2 fixes a problem with Eclipse 3.1M6.
22/MAR/2005 Long time since the last update, but anyway... There is now a new version for Eclipse 3.x and derivatives (such as Rational Developer). I will not be maintaining a version for Eclipse 2.x anymore. Important bugfix for the non-persistent preferences, new features: now shows project name in results list and allows turning off the "focus in navigator or package explorer" behaviour.

New version of plugin released: resizeable dialog, modelled on the Ctrl-Shift-R dialogs in Eclipse. Also preferences to open java files in package explorer instead of Navigator, two alternate modes of result display as well as exclusion filters for folders and files.

What is it?

As a professional Java developer, I spend a lot of my time developing in Eclipse. I noticed that a significant amount of that time was spent navigating the various project navigation views to find the files I needed to work on.

Most of the time, I knew the filename or at least parts of the filename, so I decided to write a plugin that would let you enter partial filenames in a "quicksearch" box and open the file directly:



And here's the new preferences dialog:


From a simple filename search, it quickly progressed into something quite a bit smarter. This is quite easily the most useful thing I have every written. Enjoy.

Searching for files

The quicksearch is bound to the hotkey combination Ctrl+Alt+n
It can also be reached from the Search menu, but most of the time, you'll want to use the hotkey.

You can find files in your workspace in a number of ways:

Exact Filename Matching

If the search term you enter matches the beginning of the name of an existing file exactly, this file will be opened.
Example: "struts-c" will match "struts-config.xml"

Fuzzy Filename Matching

You can also enter any number of characters that appear in the same sequence in the file you are trying to find. Names where all capital letters are matched are given preference (CamelCase search). The more consecutive characters are matched and the nearer the matches occur to the beginning of the filename, the higher the preference.
Examples:
"strc" will match "struts-config.xml"
"npa" will match "NewProductAction.java"
"tie" will match "tiles-defs.xml" and "TestInternal.java", with tiles-defs being given preference because two consecutive characters are matched.

Force CamelCase matching

If you enter your search term in all caps, CamelCase matching will be forced. This is intensely useful when searching for Java classes, which by convention are always named in CamelCase.
Example: "SC" will match "ServiceConfiguration.java", but not "struts-config.xml"

Download

Eclipse 3.x and Rational Developer 6.0

download GotoFile V1.3.5

Installation

Important: If you have a previous version of GotoFile installed, delete the org.muermann.GotoFile* directory under eclipse/plugins before extracting the new file.

Via Update Site: In Eclipse, open the Help->Software Updates->Find and Install menu item. Then choose the "Search for new features to install" option.
Click "New Remote Site" and enter http://www.muermann.org/gotofile/update for the URL. Make sure that the "GotoFile" entry is selected in the list and click "Finish". Check the GotoFile checkbox and follow the installation wizard. Make sure you restart Eclipse after installing.

From downloaded archive: Simply extract the zip file in your eclipse home directory. This should create an org.muermann.gotoFile.* directory in the plugin folder.
Start Eclipse and press Ctrl+Alt+n. If the search box does not pop up, you need to activate the plugin for the current perspective: right-click on the toolbar and choose "Customize Perspective".
In Eclipse 3.x, open the Commands tab and check the GotoFileE30 plugin.
In Eclipse 2.x and WSAD, expand "Other" and check the GotoFileE21 plugin.

License

Gotofile is licensed under the LGPL, full source code is included.

Feedback

If you find any problems or bugs, or the search mechanism does not behave the way you expect, or you think of additional features that would be useful, please send an email to gotofile_at_muermann_dot_org.

Cheers,
Max