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RE: Sharing files like in MS Visual SouceSafe

From: Tom McMillen <thomas.mcmillen_at_mppglobal.com>
Date: 2004-10-07 10:28:07 CEST

>
> What you are effectively saying is that I can work around this
> deficiency in subversion by changing my project setup and redoing our
> workflow to accommodate it. That's a very general solution for pretty
> much any case where a tool is lacking a feature. The thing is,
> sometimes it's not so easy to make those kinds of changes.
>

Yes it could well be a work around for you... but it least it gives you
the opportunity to get away from VSS if you want the other advantages
of SVN right now. If you can live with the 'limitations' and work arounds
you get a overall better SCM tool now.

(If I didn't have a deployment script, sharing the file across different
projects in the source could well be a workaround if I were to go from
SVN to VSS ;-)

> Hypothetical example, based on how I have used this feature in the
> past... I have many utility files that are all stored in a utility
> project, but only one of the files is needed by my project and it is
> easier for other tools to manage if that file exists within my projects
> source tree. The file must follow a standard format that should be the
> same for all the projects that use it. Therefore it is best if there
> really is only one 'current' version of that file that is shared
> between multiple projects.
>

ASP Included files fall under this category. I agree it would be easier
for a developer to edit the copy in place for their solution, but having
a central single copy allows better control of testing (I think) - it
means if you do have testing set up, and the util is used for many projects
all your testing for that file is in one place too.

I can easily see a situation where I change the util in one project,
and test it for my project. Then when Dave comes to test the util on his
project it fails, because his project has different test cases. If there is
only one file, then there will also only be one set of test cases, so I'm
less likely to break someone elses use of that file.

> Like I said earlier, I don't really use the sharing feature much, but
> it can be very handy for some cases, when factoring out the bits that
> are shared to it's own unique project, used indirectly by all the
> others doesn't fit well into the project structure.
>

Handy but dangerous.. see comment above - however if you know the dangers,
using it can be quite safe... (liquid nitrogen can be dangerous, it
doesn't mean you can't use it if you know how to use it safely.)

> It is true that refactoring as you suggest is often a reasonable
> alternative, but is it always the best way? If you had the sharing
> feature would you still refactor things that way? In all cases?
>

No, like I said, I've used if for asp scripts. I could have written
these as a COM+ DLL and shared the compiled resource, but would have
lost the ease of editing the asp. However the sharing is now done by
NAnt.

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Received on Thu Oct 7 10:23:45 2004

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