First a little disclaimer: I really like Mylyn and find it one of the most useful and certainly one of the most innovative development tools ever. I am using it for quite some time and started using its version 2.x since the JIRA Connector started working correctly with ISO-8859-1 againHowever, there is something in the use of Mylyn that I would really like to be customizable. I thought that maybe I would get used to the default plugin behavior after some time using it, but unfortunately it didn’t happen for me and for most of my working mates.
I would like to be able to configure Mylyn’s task context management so that files are added to the task context only when saving them, instead of adding at the time the file is opened.
For example, very frequently when developing some new feature I open some files that are not related to the current task just to see how something was implemented on some other class or file. I don’t want to have this file I just opened added to the context. I want to be able to add to the context only the files I actually changed during the task activity.
As I don’t know if this is a common desire among Mylyn’s users in general, the ideal solution would be to have the configuration option of adding files to task context at opening or only when saving the files.
As i said I can’t speak for Mylyn’s users in general, but at least here at Globo.com (where we have 100-200 Java developers) most of the guys who used Mylyn had the same opinion.
I have already requested this enhancement at Mylyn’s Bugzilla, and I would really appreciate having a nice feedback on that, telling if this could be done in the future, if it’s too complicated, if it’s just a misuse of the tool, et cetera.
I have previously talked directly to Mik and Eugene regarding the JIRA Connector and their response exceeded the best expectations I could have. So, in this humble space of mine, I would like to receive some feedback on this new feature I am requesting. I can assure that it would take my Mylyn satisfaction to an even higher level and it would turn a reasonable bunch of users into very happy advocates of this great tool, starting with me 
Hi, buddy!
I agree with Maylyn is a very useful tool and I wish Mylyn’s team have time to solve that little bug as soon as possible.
Regards,
Fabiano Izabel
Certainly Mylyn will be widely used in our company, but only if the points raised by Bruno are met.
Regards,
Rafael Moreira.
Bruno: thanks for filing the bug report. I have responded there so that we can keep track of this discussion.
209027: Adding files to task context only when saving them, not when opening
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=209027
Also note the pointer to using the Mylyn’s automated task context change sets, since it might provide most of what you are after:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Mylyn_User_Guide#Team_Support
Hi Mik, thanks for analysing this proposal and responding it quickly.
Regarding the automated change set, it indeed does exactly what I expect it to do, showing the modified files grouped by the task (in our case, JIRA issue) and the commit brings the comment box with the issue URL already filled. This works great, and helps a lot.
However, the number 1 feature for us is: developer A works on task JIRA-123 and attaches the task context to the issue on JIRA. Some time afterwards, developer B needs to do something related to JIRA-123, but it’s another issue now. Developer B retrieves the context from issue JIRA-123 and is able to see exactly what developer A did.
In our team, we have a pretty reasonable number of issues per month. I would say something around 100-150 issues monthly. Being able to see the precise modifications that were done in a past issue is of tremendous help when developing a related feature or bug fix in the future.
Although I understand perfectly Mylyn’s proposal, and agree with this proposal, it does require a lot of discipline and caution in order to enable the goal of our “number 1 feature”, and this level of discipline and caution ends up taking some of the concentration needed for the task implementation itself.
I’d really really enjoy being able to customize this behaviour, and i’m sure this would earn Mylyn even more loyal users. If this issue gets voted enough on your Bugzilla do you think it might be implemented in a future release?
Thanks again for the attention and support, you guys make me proud of being an open source advocate!