Re: [Gnome-devtools] gnome-vcs: the start

[Dirk Vangestel <dirk_vangestel yahoo com>]

--- James Turner <jmt dcs ed ac uk> wrote:
> Some overall comments, firstly this is really great
> idea, and your basic
> description seems pretty much on the money to me. My
> experience is with
> CVS and Perforce, and hence my immediate question is
> how you will handle
> 'batching' i.e add/remove/commit groups in CVS and
> change-lists in
> Perforce. (it sounds as if ClearCase doesn't have
> this notion) The

I agree this is a weak point at the moment. What I'm
thinking of right now is to not do anything on a check
in, and do the commits when you log out. It would be
advisible I think to add a 'commit' command, to avoid
having to log out/log in if you just want to do a
commit.
And no, ClearCase does not have this kind of
functionality. It does everything on a file basis,
which works quite well BTW. It's one of the reasons
why it's my second choice: it differs the most from
rcs.

> 'easy' solution of simply *not* batching commands
> (i.e add = 'add +
> commit') is highly undesirable; auotmatic grouping
> might be possible,

I've thought about that, but I also don't think it's a
good solution. Especially not in the typical cvs usage
scenario.

> i.e delaying commits for some specifed timeout (eg 5
> minutes) and using
> this delay to combine sucessive commands. But that
> raises plenty of
> problems of it's own.

I don't think that's a good option either. You want to
*know* when a commit happens, it's something you need
to have under close control.

> The other point is that I've used the 'uniifed VCS
> interface' built into
> both CodeWarrior and VisualStudio and generally
> there is an appallaing
> mismatch betwen the UI presented and the features of
> the underlying VCS

I've used it too, and for basic things I find it's
good enough. You need to be able to make revisions of
files easily, most of the rest of the functionality is
not used that often. The problem with the MS interface
is that they never looked at cvs and thus the
interface is totally unsuited IMHO.

> providers. So rather than trying to provide a common
> visual
> configuration interface, I would suggest using
> embedded bonobo
> widgets/controls (don't know the exact terminology).
> This means when
> wriitng a new VCS provider, not only must you write
> the interface code,
> but also provide implementations of the
> 'config-widget', and any others.

I was already planning that for the more advanced
features. But the basic things should map pretty
easily on the things I described in the document I
think.

> Of course this means the interface is no longer
> consistent, but I think
> that's a false economy : the CodeWarrior interface
> proved to me that
> trying to squeeze different systems into one UI
> doesn't work. Of course
> there can still be consistent UIs for other parts
> (if UIs are even
> required).

Probably not, just a few menu options and/or a
toolbar. I'm thinking of allowing the different vcs
implementations to just create their own menu and
toolbar, but for popup menus that's more difficult.
But I really need to dig deeper into bonobo to see
what's possible.

> Where I worked, I found people used
> WinCVS to manipulate the
> CVS repository, and WinP4 to access the Perforce
> repository : they hated
> doing that, but they hated the 'unified' interfaces
> in VisualStudio even
> more.

So the challenge is to make something everybody can
live with :)

> Anyway I hope I haven't dampened people's enthusiasm
> : I've just had a
> rather bad experience in this area :-)
> [Oh, and personally, I'm never using Perforce ever
> again if I can help
> it]

I'm glad with the input, and don't worry, the
enthusiasm is still there :)

Dirk



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Thousands of Stores.  Millions of Products.  All in one Place.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/