Source Control VFP 7.0

[RFanslow]

Good Morning

I am in the middle of a fairly large project in VFP 7.0
while most of this is maintenance (60%) and some new development (40%), this will need to be maintained until the rewrite into the dot net world, which is estimated at this time to last about 36 months. I am looking for suggestions for some source control, for obvious reasons.

looking for any input to steer me in the right direction

Thanks

Fanz

 

[Olaf Doschke]

What will you use for .NET source control?

We're using TFS and also handle VFP sources in there. We don't wire VFP directly to the TFS via its source control options, but simply use Visual Studio Team Explorer to manage the sources. It handles SCX, VCX, etc. as binary files, but forget about merging changes of two developers in the same VCX or SCX anyway.

You can integrate VFP deeper into this by setting up an SCC provider as shown here in the attachment.

Also notice codeplex is a site hosting TFS repositories and VFPX is hosted there. Tamar might tell you more about VFP SCC integration with codeplex.

If you want something else and free, have a look at

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

Browsing the article again, and as far as I remember Christof also didn't made use of SCC integration in VFP itself, he demonstrates handling the repositories with the WinCVS tool, but he's offering a nice detail solution neither the native scctext.prg nor extended versions of that offered, two way conversion of binary (dbf) files into XML and back.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hi Fanz,

There are several excellent systems on the market. The one I have used most is called NG3. It works very well, and I am happy to recommend it. But it is just one of many. You will have to form a judgement based on price, ease of use, features, etc.

That said, I have found that the best way to use any source control system in VFP is to check the files in and out manually, rather than trying to integrate the system with the project manager. There are several reasons for that, which we can go into if you wish. But those issues apply regardless of your choice of product.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[TamarGranor]

I'm very happily using Mercurial with VFP, but without IDE integration. I am using Frank Perez's VFP add-on for Beyond Compare to allow me to simply check in the binary files and be able to diff them.

Best resources for Mercurial/VFP:

http://www.ita-software.com/papers/Borup_Mercurial_Published.pdf

http://www.ita-software.com/papers/Borup_Mercurial2_Published.pdf

Tamar