The project facility is intended to provide a lightweight approach to managing a large number of files spread between different subfolders and packages.

The project facility makes it easy to work with larger projects, and allows you to save open java files into a project file and then reopen the project at a later time. This means that you don't have to waste time reopening files in multiple folders. The project facility was designed with two goals in mind:

1. To allow sets of related files to be opened together.

2. To allow DrJava's tools and options to manage a set of related files as a single entity.

The fundamental difference between the DrJava project facility and the project facilities of most professional development environments is that DrJava does not distinguish between "Open" files and "Project" files--if a file is open and in the project source directory, it is part of the project.