It's very common for open source projects to be distributed in the form of TGZ
files.
These files usually end in ".tar.gz" or ".tgz".  It would be very convenient for me
to try the new IDE if it had a way for me to enter the URL pathname to such a TGZ
file, and the IDE would take it from there to create a project for me.

With open source, one of the most common ways of getting and installing
binaries is to build from source.  So the user may not have any interest 
(when they start!) of debugging or browsing or any such tasks.  They just
an easy way of creating the binaries.  If we can get them to use our IDE to
perform that "build" task, then when they later discover they need to debug
or edit, it will be very natural for them to return to the IDE to do it,
instead of using gdb or whatever.

So the tasks the IDE could do here:

1. create simple dialog like "import project from internet"
   With one text field "URL or file:".
2. If the user enters file, open it.  If they enter a URL,
   then use "wget" or "curl" to download it.
3. expand the source tarball
4. If there is a configure script, run the configure script
5. hook up the default makefile targets created by 'configure'
   (These are fairly standard)
6. build the project (not sure how much to do automatically here)

The initial dialog might need some checkboxes like:
  [] build
  [] install

For complete implementation of this RFE it might be necessary
for the "makefile projects" feature to have some special understanding
of the "configure" script and how it is used to create makefiles.

Maybe a menu option like "rerun configure" would be a useful feature.
This step needs to be performed when building for different platforms, 
or changing some of the configuration settings.

When running "configure" automatically, it is common that the user
may want to add some options to the configure command line.  Giving
the user comeplace to add such stuff in the IDE would also be good.
(It should be easy to jump through if you don't care)
chris quenelle