If you like VSS but want to have a real db backend, you might want to
look at JEDI Version Control System http://jedivcs.sourceforge.net/, an
Open Source project.
Cheers,
Kuet-Fung
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Brennan
Sent: Wednesday, 26 September 2007 10:12
To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
Subject: [DUG] Source Control - Sharing files between projects
Hi,
I'm interested in hearing how people use their source control.
We currently use Visual SourceSafe (VSS) which it turns out
(after some comparison with other options) is quite nice in terms of
core feature set. However is isn't a true database with atomic commits
so there is that constant risk of database corruption if a network
connection dies. We've been pretty luck so far but we have had one
fairly minor scare. It also lacks strong support for branching and
changeset type changes. So I can certainly see benefits in moving to a
more powerful tool. The problem is that the alternatives all seem to be
missing one or more VSS features. For example I don't like
Subversion/CVS because their lack of explicit checkouts means you can't
tell which developers are working on a particular file (unless you use
Subversion locks but then only one developer can edit the file at once,
unlike VSS's multiple checkouts).
So the current favourite is probably Perforce. I know several
companies on DUG (most notably Accredo) use and love Perforce. It looks
great. Costs a bit but we can probably handle that. The one feature it
appears to be missing is Shared Files. To explain, VSS allows you to
share a file between multiple folders. We have maybe a dozen Delphi
projects and most of our source files are used by more than one project.
That's fine, we put each project into a different VSS folder and share
the files to the projects which require them. Unfortunately this appears
to be a VSS specific ability.
So the questions:
1. Does anyone know how to reliably achieve similar shared file
between folders functionality in Perforce?
2. Most development companies must have similar shared source
files. How do you structure your projects and source files? (Note: I am
talking about source files used by projects here, not files which are
compiled into VCL packages)
Some thoughts on question 2:
One option is to just put all files into a single directory. No
need to share now! However this means that projects could easily end up
compiling in files you don't think they are (or should be) using because
Delphi will always find the file. With our current separate folders
scheme there is some control and you can be fairly sure whether a
project is or is not using a source file.
Another option would be to put the projects in one directory,
the source files in one or more other directories, and then get the
projects to reference each source file by relative path. This way each
project will only be able to compile in files which are specifically
referenced in the project file so you can easily check which files are
being used. The downside of this (and the previous option too) is that
each project is directly sharing the files with the others. So if you
are making multiple changes in one project over the period of a week or
so then it quite probable that none of your other projects will compile
until you are finished because they will be trying to compile in your
changed files. This is particularly frustrating if you need to make a
small unrelated change to another project midway through the week.
So... what's a developer to do!?
Cheers,
David.
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