I want to manage different sets of file versions locally on a machine without using complex version control tools like TFS/Git/SVN...etc. here is my use case:
I have a Windows virtual machine that contains many xml, xslt, xsl, txt...etc. files, the virtual machine gets updated with every release of my product.
Often I need to analyze errors in this virtual machine, so I change many files and run the product and start analyzing, let us call these file changes FileChangeSet1.
based on the results above I need to change other files and maybe some of the files in FileChangeSet1 and do another test.
again based on the results, I need to change more files, eventually I end up with FileChangeSet1, FileChangeSet2...FileChangeSet(n)
I want to:
be able to switch between these file change sets easily and quickly, e.g. have a GUI that shows my my tree of FileChangeSets then click one of them and all files of that change are used.
create file change sets from other file change sets e.g. copy FileChangeSet1 in FileChangeSet2 and change only one file in set 2
I don't want to configure and install a complex version/source control system like TFS/Git/SVN where I have to create a database of all my files first.
Making snapshots of the virtual machine is not an option because it is extremely slow.
I think you would not have much advantage with version control tools even because they are made to version text files. For binary files, I think you would end up like managing several diffent copies of the binary files anyway (at least for older tools such as CVS and SVN).
If you are running in linux, you may want to use cmp/diff tools. Take a look on incremental diff and diff tools such as patchutils.
Consider also to create a checksum of huge files to avoid comparing them for nothing.
ps. also take a look on this - http://jojodiff.sourceforge.net/ - haven't tried but it seems simple to use and promising.
Mercurial is the right tool for me. With it I can solve my business case easily as follows:
Install mercurial on Windows, it integrates in the Windows file explorer.
Create a local version control mercurial database by right clicking my root folder.
Now I can open all my files under my root folder in different text editors e.g. notepad++ and modify these files.
When I want to save/remember a specific status I simply commit the files to mercurial by right clicking the root folder, I can provide a commit note.
Later I can change my files in a different way and test how my system reacts to them, again I can commit these files locally.
Over time I have a history of change sets in Mercurial, I can go back to any change set, branch it, merge it...etc.
I have a huge and complex system that contains thousands of files, my root folder is actually the C:\ drive, I can easily and quickly make out of c: a version control database using mercurial.
All with a simple and intuitive GUI, no command line learning needed.
Related
I have a bootloader project and an app project within the same workspace in Eclipse.
I'd like to merge the hex files of theses two project into one single hex, so that I can flash in my MCU both project at the same time.
I know this is possible using some tools (https://www.keil.com/support/docs/2666.htm), but I would like that the merge process happens in Eclipse using a post-build command or else.
Thanks
Intel hex are just text files, you can merge them manually in any text editor by using simple copy/paste. Grab the data rows only from one of the files.
This assuming that there's no CRC on the program as whole. Also, you probably shouldn't have multiple rows with the same address in the same file or you might confuse some tools.
I'd recommend doing this through a diff tool such as for example WinMerge, or the one integrated in your version control system. Once you have it working you could write a file handling script for merging them automatically.
I would like to do version control with my structured text project (I use infoteam openpcs) for industrial applications. The problem is that each time I modify an *.ST file, I get changes also in *.POE and *.bak corresponding files. Is there any nice way to do version control of this type of files?. For me, it is very annoying to follow version changes, because each time I modify onlye one *.ST file, I get the same change also in *.POE and *.bak. The thing is that I also would like to link this to redmine or TortoiseSVN and only see and/or recover the changes in the *.ST files. Is it possible?.
If you are not limited by which version control tool to use, you can opt for Git. It provides a way to ignore certain file extensions (to be more exact, ignore any files matching various patterns specified by the user)
This page has a nice explanation on this feature - https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/saving-changes/gitignore
I have a simple task to which some simple solution should exist yet I cannot come across one.
I have a huge file tree on computer A (development). I have the same (multiple) such file trees on a computer B (let's call it production). Computer B runs FTP and PHP, nothing much else.
I need to move the changed files from the tree on A to the tree on B but as efficiently as possible. I.e. if just one file changes, it will just transfer that one file. It would be enough to "compare" the local and remote trees using last modification dates, nothing else needed.
I tried to use the good old Ant for it but that really does not work as the FTP task is really bad one there (does not preserve modification dates on PUT and so on). What other options are there if I do not want to write the code for such a task myself? I'd expect there is some tool out there that would make a remote dir listing, download it to local computer, select only those changed files and transfer them to the destination. Do you know how I could do it? Some sort of FTP or PHP-based distributed robocopy?
EDIT: I should have added that I mean doing it on a Windows 10 computer syncing to some FTP/PHP server using command-line automated script, not GUI.
Actually I solved the issue using winscp. I managed to integrate it into ant calling it through the task and using the winscp's synchronize command. For my current folder size it is fast enough, let's see later. The FTP command in ant was not useful since it does not preserve the modification dates.
Is it possible to create StarTeam shortcut, opening project and overriding working directory?
Is it possible to create one StarTeam shortcut, opening several projects at a time?
Problem is: I have several solutions, which use the same StarTeam project, and I have to manually change working folder very often (View -> Properties -> Working folder). It is not possible to share data between solutions: local view should be located in separate place for each solution.
You could create different views for each project. Different views can have different working folders; in fact, they do by default. Keep in mind, a view can be set to behave pretty much the same as the default view, with regards to which revisions of files you see. But they can have their own working folders. The downside of this technique is that Change Requests and the like will also be "in the view," so moving them will not necessarily affect other views. But given that you are working on an entirely separate projects, that might not be all such a bad thing. As usual, you should experiment with this in a test project, and make sure you're happy with the behavior, before using it on your "life" repository.
The override/alternate directory for each project and folder is maintained inside a local file - not on the server. The default working folder is kept on the server, and any time you update it the changes are propigating to all other users.
The shortcut xml has no place to specify a working folder.
If you don't need the StarTeam GUI, stcmd allows you to specify a new working folder for most operations with the -rp and -fp flags.
If the projects that need this common library code are in their own views, you could also share the common project into a new subfolder within those other projects. You can use a relative path for this new subfolder that includes .. to move it outside the containing project's folder. This lets you use common code in many projects while allowing you to specify the location of that common code per project.
Shares come with some overhead, so be aware, but other than that it would probably work for what you're trying to do.
We (occasionally!) have to issue hot fixes for our product and do this by reissuing the affected files directly rather than with a new installer. The product has a large number of pieces, some managed code, some unmanaged.
Currently development flags which build artifacts (exes, dlls) need to be shipped in a hot fix. We'd like to be able to identify these automatically by comparing them to the previous build. A simple binary diff doesn't work since the version numbers on all the files have changed as stamping the files with a new number if part of the build.
Are there any tools that will do a more intelligent comparison and decide which files should be included? We'd still have a developer check the list, this is more to catch files the developer didn't think of than the other way around.
(Note: changing the hot fix/build process is not an immediate option, whether or not we should be shipping individual files is a different discussion!)
These are the options I see:
On your build machine get a report of the files that were changed and use the directory structure of the file path to determine which dlls were really updated. Not sure if this breaks your "no build process changes" rule or not.
If you want to wait until after the build I would recommend using a binary file diff tool like http://www.romeotango.com/Downloads/FileCompReadMe.txt. Using that you can get back a set of diffs so you just need to get your script that uses the tool to ignore the diff that occurs as a result of the version number. You can figure out the pattern to how the version number appears by using a controlled scenario where you know the two binary files are the same except for the version number and note where the differences are. Do that for a few of your dlls and hopefully a pattern emerges enough so that you can script it.