MATLAB Projects feature creates hundreds of XML files under resources/project directory

[jvcarli]

Hi,

While working with the MATLAB Projects feature, I noticed that it generated over 500 XML files under resources/project. This number of files seems excessive and introduces unnecessary complexity.

I came across a mention of a "single file project" mechanism in this pull request from climatedatastore toolbox, which seems like a more efficient alternative. However, I couldn’t find any official documentation explaining this feature or how to use it.

Could you please confirm if this is an officially supported feature? If so, it would be greatly appreciated to have detailed documentation or guidance on enabling and working with a single file project mechanism.

Thank you!

[rpurser47]

Yes -- the project system is optimized for very large teams working with thousands of files under source control, where the meta data needs to be stored in a distributed way. If you have a small group of developers, you can use the "single XML file" version of projects. Unfortunately, this has to be set before you create the project. In the preferences panel for projects, there is a "Project Definition Files" setting that you want to switch to "use a single project file"

(the "not recommended" note is specifically for projects with lots of collaborators)

Unfortunately, you'll have to delete the project, commit to Git, change the setting, recreate the project, and then recommit (the one XML file) to git.

This is briefly mentioned in this doc page.

Let me know if you're successful, and I'll add a link to this discussion to help future readers.