Using Bookmarks in Your Development Projects

I've recently began helping with large project at work.  The project contains a very large codebase, and in working through all the pieces, I thought, "I wish I could just bookmark some of these locations, so that I could return to particular areas later on".   This thought hit me after I spent about 10 minutes trying to find a piece of code that I knew I visited earlier in the week.

It appears that I didn't have to look far for a bookmarking feature.  I use Eclipse, and the great folks on that project have already thought about this.  To bookmark a section of code, simply right click in the left hand margin of the code editor, and you'll see an "Add Bookmark..." link.  Click it, and you will create a bookmark in the code that you can then use to quickly jump back to that location.

You'll also want to add the "Bookmarks" view to your perspective as well.  Simply click Window -> Show View and enter Bookmark.  Then add that view.

Bookmarks isn't something that you'll need/want when you are browsing your own projects, but it can certainly save time when you are browsing code in a larger project that you are not yet familiar with.

Bookmarking... It's a good thing. (Sometimes)