Creating a remote project with PyDev

Question

I'm new to Eclipse/PyDev and have what's probably a really basic question. I want to use it to edit and debug python files on a remote system. I am able to do this using RSE and pydevd, but what I'm doing doesn't really seem integrated with the IDE. That is, I can go to the RSE perspective and edit the files. I can then lauch the script on the remote system and step through it in the debugger. But the files are not part of a project that Eclipse maintains for me. It's all fairly disjointed. Is there a way to make remote files part of an Eclipse project? I can drag the files into the project, but that makes a local copy. Am I just approaching this wrong?

Thanks, Jerry

Answer 1

OK, it turns out to be not only simple but rather obvious once you find it. From the RSE perspective, right-click the folder containing your source files and select "Create Remote Project." This seems to work fairly well, but I'm still having one problem: It seems the debugger wants a local copy of the file I am debugging, and does not consider the RSE copy local enough. So now I have to copy the file from the remote server to my workstation before I start debugging. It kind of defeats the purpose of the integration.

Is there a better way? I'm looking at SSH filesystems, but really don't want to have to do that. It feels like I'm so close.

Edit 2011-11-09: This has recently been addressed by the PyDev developers. As of today, installing the nightly PyDev update adds an option to fetch source from the remote server. Details here.