getting started with fossil - version-control

I just got started with fossil. My reasons for selecting fossil are:
cross-platform
single exectuable
single repository file (typical extension .fossil)
supposedly easy to use (but aren't they all?)
I have several questions. Context: Suppose I want to keep track of changes to every file inside several directories, aptly named dir1, dir2, etc. Suppose I want to keep a copy on a USB stick. Suppose I want to keep a copy on another partition of the same disc as I move back and forth between Linux and Windows partitions. I'm the only user and may not always have access to the internet.
I would like to store dir1.fossil outside of dir1. Can I do that? The user-manual instructions tell me to create dir1.fossil from inside dir1, and that's where the dir1.fossil are currently created in my setup. Ideally I'd like my dir1.fossil, dir2.fossil, etc. files to be stored together in another directory, e.g. named fossilreposdir and located at the root. Possible?
I would like to stick a usb flash drive into my laptop and push/pull repositories from it in a plug-and-play manner.
If possible I would also like to push/pull repositories across my windows and linux partitions without using the usb stick.
If setting it up is too much of a headache (for my poor head), I will resort to simple copy-pasting of the .fossil repositories back and forth.

Yes.
Yes.
What DO you want to use? Me, I use dropbox to hold my repositories. Then every machine registered with dropbox has access to all my repositories.
// into working directory
cd ../dir1
// create repository somewhere else
fossil new ../fossilreposdir/test.fsl
// open remote repo in local working directory
fossil open ../fossilreposdir/test.fsl test.fsl
// add files
fossil addremove
// commit
fossil ci

Related

Use Git list output to copy files for archiving

I'm currently helping to maintain a project for a client remotely. I'm the only developer ergo some of my unorthodox approaches/thinking.
the problem
The client is using Visual Studio 2010 + Team Foundation Server for their source control. I am working on a Mac over VPN and have tried several approaches to make committing to their TFS workable. I've tried TFS plugin for Eclipse with no luck (VPN really hoses the connection to TFS). Currently I am having to do a full "checkout for edit" through a virtual machine to the TFS, then transferring the project over the VPN to overwrite those files. Not a sustainable solution to say the least.
the solution?
I'm wondering if there is a way to:
get a list of changed files from GIT (I think this is the solution
(How to list all the files in a commit?)
then use that list as a means to go in and fetch those file, maintaining their folder structure
from there I can do my dump over
VPN into the VM that has the project mapped in TFS.
Or if there is something I've overlooked or hadn't thought of, please do recommend them, I'm all ears.
First, I'm assuming you are running the VM on or near the TFS server, not on your Mac. If not, you can just share a directory using VMware/VirtualBox and edit away on your Mac...
It sounds like you could achieve what you want with plain old Git. If you:
Create a bare repository on the VM (git init --bare)
Add a post-receive hook to copy the files from the master branch (for example) into the TFS directory, overwriting merrily (http://git-scm.com/book/en/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks)
Initialise your local copy of the source as a Git repository (git init)
Add the remote repository. Assuming it's a Windows box you can use an SMB shared folder over the VPN so your remote is "local" as far as Git is concerned. (git remote add tfsserver file:///Volumes/tfsmount/code
Your first push will be expensive (but you could prepopulate the remote repo to get around that), but subsequent pushes would be just the changesets. The post-receive hook would then take care of updating the files, and you're laughing.
Of course, you then get to impress them with how amazing Git is, get them to migrate, and your problem goes away forever :).
Update: Here's a link which describes these steps in more detail, under the guise of updating a remote website: http://toroid.org/ams/git-website-howto.

How to work on a large number of remote files with PHPStorm

I have a small Debian VPS-box on which I host and develop a few small, private PHP websites.
I develop on a Windows desktop with PHPStorm.
Most of my projects only have a few dozen source files but also contain a few thousand lib files.
I don't want to run a webserver on my local machine because this creates a whole set of problems, I don't want to be bothered with for such small projects (e.g. setting up another webserversynching files between my Desktop and the VPS-box; managing different configurations for Windows and Debian (different hosts, paths...); keeping db schema and data in synch).
I am looking for a good way to work with PHPStorm on a large amount of remote files.
My approaches so far:
Mounting the remote file system in Windows (tried via pptp/smb, ftp, webdav) and working on it with PHPStorm as if it were local files.
=> Indexing, synching, and PHPStorms VCS-support became unusably slow. This is probably due to the high latency for file access.
PHPStorm offers the possibility to automatically copy the remote files to the local machine and then synching them when changes are made.
=> After the initial copying, this is fast. Unfortunately, with this setup, PHPStorm is unable to provide VCS support, which I use heavily.
Any ideas on this are greatly appreciated :)
I use PhpStorm in a very similar setup as your second approach (local copies, automatic synced changes) AND importantly VCS support.
Ideal; Easiest In my experience the easiest solution is to checkout/clone your VCS branch on your local machine and use your remote file system as a staging platform which remains ignorant of VCS; a plain file system.
Real World; Remote VCS Required If however (as in my case) it is necessary to have VCS on each system; perhaps your remote environment is the standard for your shop or your shop's proprietary review/build tools are platform specific. Then a slightly different remote setup is required, however treating your remote system as staging is still the best approach.
Example: Perforce - centralized VCS (client work-space)
In my experience work-space based VCS systems (e.g. Perforce) can be handled best by sharing the same client work-space between local and remote systems, which has the benefit of VCS file status changes having to be applied only once. The disadvantage is that file system changes on the remote system typically must be handled manually. In my case I manually chmod (or OS equivalent) my remote files and wash my hands (problem solved). The alternative (dual work-space) approach requires more moving parts, which I do not advice.
Example: Git - distributed VCS
The easier approach is certainly Git which has it's wonderful magic of detecting file changes without file permissions being directly coupled to the VCS. This makes life easy as you can simply start with a common working branch and create two separate branches "my-feature" and "my-feature-remote-proxy" for example. Once you decide to merge your changes upstream, you do so (ideally) from your local environment. The remote proxy branch could be reverted or whatever you want. NOTE: in the case of Git I always have two branches because it's easy. And when you hard drive melts in a freak lighting strike you have extra redundancy :|
Hope this helps.

I want to program using two computers, how can I setup a working directory to accommodate that

I am using netbeans to write a program. I have come a long way writing different classes on one of two computers, however I need to use both on the same classes. My net beans directory is on dropbox. I set the projects working directory as
C:\Documents and Settings\damadr01\Dokumenter\Dropbox\Me, Myself & David\Activity_Calibrator
However this will mess up as soon as I try to run from the other computer. Is there a way of writing a relative wdirectory?
I suggest you to use a VCS, like git, Mercurial, Subversion, CVS etc.
All of these have support on NetBeans. You can set the main repository on DropBox and clone repositories or working copies on a local folder. This way, you'll get the extra benefit of having the commit history.

Keeping divergent versions of a hg version-controlled file on different machines?

I am working on a project that depends on external programs, and needs to know the paths to them. I develop and use the project on several machines, using mercurial for version control. The paths are machine-dependent, so I keep them in a machine-specific config file. I would like the config file for each host to be version-controlled, but I need to ensure that the config file from one host would never overwrite the config file for another host when pushing or pulling between hosts. Is there any way to accomplish this?
In principle, Wim is right: machine specific configurations shouldn't be part of the project's source control. As long as you walk alone, this isn't a real problem, but once you want to provide generic releases of your project, you have to get rid of them. In that case you might not be happy about the fact, that the change history contains files with machine specific data.
Nevertheless, it may make sense to have machine specific data in version controlled files (personally I do this for my dot-rc files and shell scripts). In that case I would suggest to separate generic and specific configurations into different files and include/utilize the specific one at build- or runtime, depending on the currently used machine.
If it is not possible to detect the current machine automatically, you could still create an unversioned symbolic link on each machine, pointing to the appropriate specific configuration file. For instance, on the machine foo the file layout could look like this:
generic.conf version-controlled
specific-foo.conf version-controlled
specific-bar.conf version-controlled
specific.conf → specific-foo.conf unversioned symbolic link
An alternative to symbolic links is to use a hook which automatically creates specific.conf, e.g. on each invocation of hg update. As hooks are set in a repository's hgrc file, it can be defined individually on each machine. Here's an example of a corresponding hooks section in the .hg/hgrc file of a repository clone on the machine foo:
[hooks]
update = cp specific-foo.conf specific.conf
Machine specific configuration settings should not be version controlled in the same repository as the project code.
However, it is still a good idea to put an inactive sample configuration file in your code repository. And this sample could show a bunch of typical locations for the external program paths you mentioned as lines that are commented out. That way you make it easier to get your project running on new machines.

Emulating symlink-like behaviour in a source control repository

Suppose I have the following (desired) folder structure:
*CommonProject
*Project#1
----> CommonProject(link)
*Project#2
----> CommonProject(link)
Where the CommonProject is the location of the source belonging to that project, and CommonProject(link) is merely a soft link to the main location. If we imagine this as a tree-view in a visual client, if I expand Project#1 I will see CommonProject there as a subdirectory, even though the files are not actually stored there.
The purpose of this is to enable the following behaviour:
When I check out Project#1 I get the files associated with that project as well as a subfolder CommonProject containing all of its files (as if Project#1 contained the copy of the files in the Version Control repository). Now if I were to modify CommonProject's files inside of Project#1 and was to submit my changes to the repository, the changes would go into the CommonProject location (no file is actually stored locally under Project#1 in the repository). Now if I was to sync Project#2, as it also contains symlink to CommonProject, it will now get my updates.
Essentially the duplication of files only exists on my machine, but in the repository there is only one version of CommonProject.
I know Perforce can’t do this, without juggling 3 specs. This is very complicated and error prone, especially when a lot of people do it. Is there a source control repository out there that can do this? (a pointer to some docs on how it can be done is a plus)
Thank you.
Subversion can directly store symlinks in the repository. This only works for operating systems that support symlinks though, as svn just stores the symlink the same way it would with any other file.
I think what you really want is to link to separate projects though. Subversion supports this through externals and git through submodules. Another alternative is to manage this sort of thing with in your build process, so that some static resources are gathered when you initialize the build. Generally, updating a utilities library that changes often is going to cause stability problems, so you can do this manually (or with clever scripts) when you need to
You'd probably be much better off just storing the projects in a flat directory (1 directory per project, all at the same level), and using whatever you build system or IDE is to link all the stuff together.