Project view shows many files that first-time users may be confused about

First-time users will likely try to make sense of each and every entry shown in the Project view. Thus it’s important this only contains things they actually need to worry about.

I think we should be hiding the following:

1. .idea dir: IDE settings that are typically edited using the IJ UI itself
2. .iml file: Same as above
3. .packages file: Generated pub artefact
4. pubspec.lock file: Generated pub artefact

Additionally, the Dart plugin will automatically hide these:

1. .pub dir: The local pub cache, not for editing
2. build dir: build outputs, not a source artefact

[alexander-doroshko]

Will small IDEs work with IML files at the top-level?

Yes, the engine is the same.

[alexander-doroshko]

The trick is that on project open and also on any Pub action started from the IDE Dart plugin auto-excludes these folders that results in the corresponding lines in the IML. You probably didn’t see dirty IML right after project open because it was not saved at that moment, but in memory IML was already updated with these lines.

So you shouldn’t remove these from the IML, they are there exactly for this purpose.