Source Control Software

[TheBlainer]

Hi,
In the company I work for, we thought that it would be helpful to have a Source control software. Because there are more programmers in the company now.

On MSDN, it says what is it, how to enable it and how to use it. But it doesn't say what software can be added to VFP.

I saw SourceSafe, but it looks like to be just working with Visual Studio.

So I was wondering if anyone of you is using this kind of software and tell me what's the name of it.

Thanks.

TheBlainer

 

[craigber]

Source Safe will work with VFP, but it has been discontinued. The issue you are thinking about is not "will it work with VFP", but "will it integrate into the VFP IDE". I've been using Subversion for some years and it's not integrated into the IDE. I have the Tortoise extension for Windows Explorer that handles check-in/check-out. Both Subversion and Tortoise are free and both very good. Once you get them installed, read

http://www.foxpert.com/docs/cvs.en.htm

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Mike Lewis]

TheBlainer,

One of my main clients uses NG3. I have found it be very effective and useful, and can recommend it.

However, I suggest you don't try to integrate it with VFP. There are several reasons that VFP doesn't work smoothly with source control software. The main one for me was the need always to open every form, report, program, etc. via the Project Manager, which is not something I habitually do (and which is extremely slow when the files in question are under source control).

My recommendation would be always to use source control if you possibly can. But check the files in and out via the system's own interface, not via VFP.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips, training, consultancy

 

[Olaf Doschke]

SourceSafe... looks like to be just working with Visual Studio."

You have to take it's age into account. At that time it was the source versioning system of Visual Studio, and VFP also was still part of Visual Studio.

Today that is Team Foundation Server, but it doesn't have the same interface as VSS anymore.

You can integrate VFP with VSS, if you want to take it to a higher more modern level don't use that kind of integration, like Mike also recommend. As you can only integrate with old style versioning systems it's really better to do versioning on the file level.

Team Foundation Server would be one such thing to use, if you have Visual Studio, it's much more than just source code versioning, it's also managing working items, unit tests and can be a build server.

More on VFP with Team Server here:

http://www.code-magazine.com/article.aspx?quickid=0703102&page=1

It's older, not adressing Team Server 2010. I have to be fair to add I don't integrate VFP with TS, which was tried by our biggest customer who did the Team Foundation Server hosting, but that process failed, more on nontechnical reasons.

Backups are m versioning system, which of course only adresses some aspects, but also the most important one: Being able to revert to an older state.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[craigber]

@Olaf

What makes you think you can't integrate TFS the same way as VSS?

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Craig,

we didn't try so, we just used VS and Team Explorer to sync tasks and mainly the project files.

I just updated myself and searched about Source Contrl and saw a webcast (in german) from Armin Neudert, who shows it actually integrates into the VFP IDE also.

I'm not so sure the main problem doesn't remain: The binary nature of many file types despite PRGs, which makes merging changes a mess.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[craigber]

Why can't you use SCCText.prg? I know it isn't perfect.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Olaf Doschke]

There is a better version of SCCText.prg as SCCTextX.prg in the VFPX project, here:

http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Alternate SCCText&referringTitle=Home

Still, SCCText or SCCTextX don't handle updating the binary files correctly in my experience. I may have a new try, since my last experiment was some years ago.

Tihs is what the help on _SCCTEXT advertises:

By default, _SCCTEXT contains Scctext.prg, a Visual FoxPro conversion program that handles translating Visual FoxPro binary files into text equivalents and back. These text files are used as the basis for comparing and merging versions of Visual FoxPro binary files through a source control application.

And it surely does not work out with the original scctext, especially the "and back" part of "translating Visual FoxPro binary files into text equivalents and back".

SCCTextX still has a remark "Additional work may need to be performed on a VCX"

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Dan Freeman]

What specific problems did you have with it Olaf?

I didn't have any, but I've been hearing how awful it was for years, so I'm curious.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Dan,

actually I don't know anymore, it's been a long time ago. I think vfp was reporting changes, where there weren't any on the one side and creating a vcx not working on the other side. It could be because of the known (and fixed in scctextx) bug about the alphabetical order of methods in the text file generated from the vcx. If that was random and two versions of the same vcx were compared vfp detected changes simply due to the source code being in different order. As a result the merge of this into a new built vcx wasn't working.

What I know is that I never got much trust in the source control features of VFP and so didn't used it.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[TheBlainer]

Thanks Craig for your response!

I had little difficulties to make them work, but now it's working great on my computer : Subversion and tortoiseSVN.

I will have to install them on the server now.

TheBlainer

 

[Dan Freeman]

Thanks Olaf,

The only problems we ever had with VSS were self-inflicted, and we *cough* discussed those situations (I yelled at people) and we got it working.

 

[TamarGranor]

If you're using Subversion, check out Christof Wollenhaupt's TwoFox for converting between VFP's binary formats and something textual that source control can compare.

http://www.foxpert.com/downloads.htm

Tamar

 

[TheBlainer]

Thanks Tamar,

It will surely be helpful.

TheBlainer

 

[Olaf Doschke]

I think I'll have a go on subversion after all these years even though I could do without until migrating development to .NET where all this and much more is integrated.

Bye, Olaf.