I'm new to Mylyn but have been using Eclipse CDT for the past 3 years or so. Since our projects have many thousands of files and up to 50 or so within a directory I love the context switching provided by each of my Mylyn tasks. This is saving me lots of scrolling around my directory structure to get to my files.
My problem is that every time I create a new Mylyn task, my Navigator, and Project Explorer trees get collapsed and I need to click my way down to the relevant directories I need. This can involve 10 or more branches of the tree to get to where I want to go. I'm using the task -> context -> copy to facility when I create new tasks to populate my new task with a context but this feels too kludgy for such an otherwise great tool.
Since many of my tasks involve files in directories close together it would be nice to be working on one task, decide I need a new one and create it with easy access to the directories near where I am currently working.
I can't wait to start using the JIRA repository capability to deal with my CRs. Hope it works as well in real life as it does in my imagination.
Have you tried switching off Eclipse's task auto focus setting? Go to
Preferences / Tasks / Context:This will stop Eclipse from hiding files that are not in the current task's context when you switch between tasks. Which for a new (empty) task means that it will not hide everything.
You can still focus on a task's context at a later date by hitting the focus button in the project explorer: