RE: GUI Diff on Repository HEAD and "a" directory?

Hi Tom,
 
so you are trying to track the same changes in two version control systems at the same time?
 
I wouldn't do this. Instead, set a fixed tate and time where the developers have to check in everything e.g., then lock the VSS repository so that nobody can commit anymore. Migrate the repository to SVN, then have the developers check out a new working copy from SVN.
 
Even with a fairly large repository, it should be possible to minimize the time where developers don't have access to a repository if you plan the migration carefully (and make a few vss2SVN trial runs before you do the migration for real). For example, you can do it overnight or over the weekend, depending on repository size.
 
ciao
Martina

________________________________

From: Tom Malia [mailto:tommalia@ttdsinc.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2007 6:28 PM
To: 'Subversion Users mailing list'
Subject: RE: GUI Diff on Repository HEAD and "a" directory?

Comparing to pure file system for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm trying to transition from VSS to subversion and during the transition, I sometimes need to compare what's been going on in VSS "working directories" to what's currently in subversion repositories for the same project or a branches of a project (one branch might still be managed VSS while I'm try to transition the trunk toSVN for example). Going forward this obviously, hopefully won't be the case, but will be for a reasonable period of time right now.

Second, in an ideal world, source code would never end up out side a managed directory... then there's the real world... at least in my company. Copies of projects end up in non-managed folders or get sent to someone that doesn't have SVN and the .svn directories get removed then the files get sent back... etc. etc.... In general there are just times when such scenarios occur for a variety of different reasons in the world in which I work.

The above scenarios kind of brings up another question.... Is there an easy way to just copy over an un managed copy of a project tree into a managed copy of the same project? For example, let's assume I have a project that has a structure like:

Proj_Root

|_Lib

| |_SubLib01

| |_SubLib01_file1

| |_SubLib01_file2

| |_SubLib02

|_Headers

| |_Header_File1

| |_Header_File2

|_Etc.

|_Etc.

So if I've got the above structure for a project that's currently being managed in VSS and accessed by 3 programs... but I'm also trying to move this to SVN so I build a repository for it. Now, I check the project out of SVN and decide I want to just completely replace the current version from SVN with a version from one of the programs directory that was originally checked out from VSS (so theirs doesn't have any .svn subdirectories obviously). The Simplest solution would be if I could just copy the other programmer's project tree into the SVN working directory, then check it all back into SVN. The problem is when you copy the non-svn tree into the SVN working directory, it deletes the .svn folders so when I go to check it all in, everything gets treated as unversioned stuff.... What I'm looking for is an easy ways to replace everything in the SVN working tree EXCEPT for the .SVN folders. I've managed to do this by just copying files one directory at a time and that worked, but it was very tedious.

Regarding you comment about doing a compare entirely within the repository... is this something that is supported in TSVN? There are times when I want to do what you have described here (though I think I need to do a lit reading about "tags" verses "Branches"). However I don't remember seeing anything is TSVN that lets me perform a GUI compare between items within a repository.

________________________________

From: Mark Phippard [mailto:markphip@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2007 10:51 AM
To: Tom Malia
Cc: Subversion Users mailing list
Subject: Re: GUI Diff on Repository HEAD and "a" directory?

On 3/18/07, Tom Malia <tommalia@ttdsinc.com> wrote:

        VSS's Diff program appears to be built into the client GUI (when I run it I don't see any separate EXE's in my task list for it). When you do a Diff, for each file/directory you want to compare you first decided if the source is a file system source or a repository source. I find this feature VERY handy. However, as you said, over a WAN the performance can be less than ideal.... I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too. I can envision creating some batch files or something that might make it easy enough to utilize the export feature you mentioned just prior to performing an actual Diff so that to the end user they don't really know the difference... However, I again may be coming at this the wrong way....

Just to come back to this once more, I do think it is possible you are coming at this from the wrong way.

Why do you need to compare repository contents against pure file system? Are people modifying files outside the scope of version control?

If the file system is just a deployed version of your application and you are just looking to compare that version against the latest version, then why are you just not using tags? Everytime you deploy you just create a tag in Subversion, and when you want to compare you can do the compare entirely within the repository by comparing the tag against the latest version, or whatever it is you want to compare.

-- 
Thanks
Mark Phippard
http://markphip.blogspot.com/