Re: Hacking the Checkout dialog

Oleg Alexander wrote:
> I am investigating the possibility of using SVN as a digital asset
> management tool at our visual effects company. We are currently using
> AlienBrain.
>
> I am trying to replicate a feature of AlienBrain in tsvn. By default,
> the AlienBrain repository is synced with a local drive letter on the
> artist's machine. In our case, it's the Z drive. For example, if an
> artist wants to check out the following directory from the AlienBrain
> repository:
>
> PathTo/AlienBrain/Repository/OurCoolAnimationProject/MayaScenes
>
> AlienBrain will automatically check out this folder as:
>
> Z:/OurCoolAnimationProject/MayaScenes
>
> SVN allows you to specify any path to be the local working copy. But we
> need all our digital asset paths to stay consistent between
> artists. Path consistency is essential because of how programs like Maya
> reference scenes and textures.
>
> The solution is simple in principle: hack the tsvn checkout dialog. Here
> is the functionality I want in tsvn:
>
> 1. The artist opens the tsvn checkout dialog.
> 2. He browses for the folder he wants to checkout using the browse
> button next to "URL of repository".
> 3. As soon as the artist clicks OK in the repo-browser, the "checkout
> directory" of the checkout dialog should update automatically with a
> "consistent". For example, if the artist chose the following path in the
> repo-browser:
>
> file:///D:/SVN/MayaTest
>
> Then the "checkout directory" should now read:
>
> Z:\MayaTest
>
> My question is: is there a way to do this already in the current version
> of tsvn? I am aware of the tsnv :commit command, but it requires that
> you already know both the source repository folder and the destination
> local copy folder before using the command. In other words, you lose the
> repo-browser functionality.
>
> Maybe there's a way to create a script to open the repo-browser first
> using the :repobrowser command. If the repo-browser returns the path of
> the selected folder on OK (does it?), then I can plug in that path into
> the :checkout command and generate the "consistent" path as well. Is
> this possible?

In TSVN 1.5 there's a new setting (Settings->Dialogs 1) called "Default
checkout path". If you set that to "Z:\", then the checkout dialog will
automatically generate the checkout path from the URL you selected in
the browser like this:

URL: file:///D:/SVN/MayaTest
Checkout path: Z:\MayaTest

(the checkout path is generated by using the default checkout path (Z:\)
and then appending the last part of the URL (MayaTest)).

Stefan

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