Technical Q&A QA1077

Working with groups and folder references in Project Builder

Q: How do I manipulate a folder as a whole in Project Builder, or "why are some folders blue and others yellow?" A: In Project Builder's file list, some folders may show up blue, and others show up yellow. The yellow ones are known as groups, and they help you organize your files in Project Builder (although they don't have to represent the file organization on disk). If you drag a folder into Project Builder from the Finder and select the radio button titled "Recursively create groups for any added folders" from the sheet, the folder hierarchy is duplicated as groups in Project Builder. If you want to work with a folder itself in Project Builder, and not the files it contains, then you want to add a folder reference (a blue folder) to your project. This allows you to do operations on the folder as a whole (such as copying it into an application bundle), instead of having to deal with the files it contains piecemeal. You add a folder reference when you drag a folder into Project Builder by selecting the radio button titled "Create Folder References for any added folders." [Sep 25 2001]