Question

I like mylyn task management, and the way contexts only show me what I’m working on.

Is there a way to take this one step further, and have a task switch close any project that isn’t part of the context?

I’m using 3.5.0.I20110301-2328 with Eclipse 3.6.2.

Answer 1

The context in Mylyn does mentions:

Manage open editors to match task context –
When checked, activating a task will automatically open editors corresponding to the most interesting files in the task context.
When deactivating a task, all editors will automatically close.
While a task is active, files that become less interesting will automatically close as you work.

But that don’t include projects, and I didn’t see any bug report asking for that feature: as the OP James Moore reports in his answer, the bug 170232 tracks that issue.
I presume the cost of switching context would be too high if it involved closing/opening projects (instead of just closing/opening Editors), and reading from the bug 170232, it seems to be the case.

Personally, I don’t think that it is necessary to close projects when closing
tasks.
The important part is to open projects if necessary when opening tasks. If you do that, then the performance should not be an issue when you switch tasks.
Closing projects on task close, should be optional: e.g. pop-up a dialog asking the user whether to close or not.

Think about it this way: if you expect your users to always make sure the project is open before activating a task, then there should be no performance impact for doing that for them.