Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
My recent (bad) experience from working with D5 is, that the form layout
should be protected better against inadvertent changes, at least in
Lazarus. When my VM window was shrunk recently, all open forms were
resized, even if only the .pas file was open, and this change made them
unusable at runtime :-(
I'd really like an *option* (project setting!) to open a project with
all forms locked. Then it would be possible to e.g. fix bugs in a
project without risking changes to the DFM/LFM files. In a long-term
(commercial...) project *no* single developer, and *no* IDE, should be
allowed to change the *appearance* of the program accidentally.
Defending the orthodox position as expounded by Mattias, his suggestion
of unchecking "Open designer on open unit" works all the way back to
0.9.24 (possibly beyond, but I can't realistically see anybody wanting
to go older). Adding an in-form property to lock its content would have
limited benefit in mixed-version work, since unless it was something
that irreparably broke the designer (but still left the form compilable)
it would either be ignored/discarded or would break the project.
I started using svn locally a year ago and am glad of it: now that I
know about the problem, I can simply look for and revert changed
forms... provided obviously that there hasn't been a bona-fide change in
the .pas which has affected the appearance.
Using filesystem properties as the starting state for a form or unit
being locked down would obviously be a possibility, but I don't know how
tolerant the IDE is of that. Another way would be to lock files based on
some property of a VCS repository (svn, git or whatever), but again
there's a risk that the IDE would accept changes and then bomb on any
attempt to save them, leaving a project inconsistent.
Elsewhere, I've been advocating some system of giving developers
privilege tokens so that- e.g.- the office junior doesn't mess directly
with pointers and assembler. I think you've reached much the same
conclusion.
--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk
[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
--
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