In both Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA, I've often found that opening files by name is simpler
than navigating through the project structure. In Eclipse, I do this with Ctrl-Shift-R,
for Open Resource, then type in part or all of the filename, and hit Enter.
This is sometimes complicated by the nature of the build process, which, depending on the
project structure and build tool, might make copies of some of the resources in directories
that Eclipse can see. When this happens, Eclipse shows you a pretty similar dialog box, but
shows multiple source directories for the file in question.
This can lead to opening the wrong file, especially if you're opening resources all the time,
and aren't watching the screen carefully for each one. It's mostly a problem when the incorrect
location is first in the sorted list, because then Eclipse will have it selected as the default.
Happily, there's a pretty simple fix for this, even if it's taken me well over a year of using
Eclipse to track it down. There's a "derived" flag on project directories in Eclipse which is
your way to tell Eclipse that the information contained therein is derived. You can get there
by right-clicking on a directory and opening the Properties dialog, or selecting it and pressing
Alt-Enter. Once you've told Eclipse that a folder is derived, it will cease to include files
from that directory in the 'Open Resource' dialog.
Problem solved -- hope this is useful for some of you.
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