Has anyone migrated to the Git integration?

[LeslieT]

We already have our projects in Git and already have a local copy of the repository. I have been reading the Flare docs to figure out their integration and I am just not clear on their project/branching management. We have branches, but a branch includes all of it and not a just a single project. Plus we do global project linking and I don't think that having projects branched independently would be a very good idea.

I am thinking that it might just be better to stick with our third-party tool for source control.

[RamonS]

You can always try it with a few test projects.

[LeslieT]

I will definitely test anything before I roll it out for use across our team.

I hate to "pollute" our Git repository with a lot of throw away files. I would normally use a "test" branch and then blow it away when I am done. I think I'll have to figure out how to get it into a branch without affecting the Master.

BTW, we use private repositories on GitHub, not the Enterprise Git hosted within a private network. I don't see anything in the interface about passing credentials -- does anyone know how this is handled?

[jjw]

I was just prompted for credentials (for Bitbucket) when the need arose, and they were then stored. You don't seem to be able to configure them in advance.

I had a few performance issues after integrating a Flare project with git. I don't know if it was the git integration that caused the problems, but I'm not using the Flare git integration any more, and my performance problems have disappeared.

J

[dcisneros]

We were/are in the process of trying to integrate with Github instead of TFS, and we were able to get all of projects pointing to Github after doing a lot of research. We had to research how move to Github without using the Import option or unbinding from TFS and then binding to Github because Flare tried to create too many unnecessary folders in our private repository during the binding.

Unfortunately, I'm experiencing some major performance issues with the Github integration. Flare is moving incredibly slow and seems to hang when I try to do anything. Eventually, Flare turns to "Not Responding," and I'm unable to do anything in the project. In fact, I can't really even open a project.

This is pretty unfortunate because we were experiencing a lot of issues with TFS, and we were really looking forward to using Github because our developers use it too. I can only assume the performance issues are stemming from the Github integration, and at this point, I think we're just going to have stick with TFS until the Github integration option smooths out.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[JKartheiser]

Hey all, has anyone made much progress with Git? Like dcisneros above, we've been having problems with the project crashing and loading in perpetuity. We've tried on multiple Git servers, but every time the results are the same. The project loaded from Git just gets buggy. Luckily, we have a backup copy that hasn't been touched by Git, but that only means we're stuck with one person making changes.

Has anyone found any viable solutions? Our IT team seems stumped, and MadCap couldn't figure anything out for us either. Like I said, we've tried multiple Git servers, we've completely uninstalled/reinstalled Flare, and we've tried both SourceTree and Flare for the uploading process. As it stands, we're phasing out TFS, so Git is becoming the mandated source control around here, so we're stuck at a bit of a stalemate.

Cheers.

[dcisneros]

Not much of an update in terms of progress with Git, but our information architect contacted MadCap and they were told there haven't been any reported performance issues with the Github bind. While I'm glad I wasn't the only one who experienced crashing projects or long load times, I will say it's still frustrating because we can't figure out why it's lagging/not working on our end either.

JKartheiser, did you bind your projects to Git via Flare in the Project Properties?

[LeslieT]

Thanks for all of the feedback here so far. Git is a distributed source control, which is why was wondering how this would play out with a Flare integration.

Given what I am reading, I think we will stick to doing our source control outside of Flare for now. Git really is the best source control and I can understand why so many developers have made the switch. But it is a different workflow. Effective branching/merging is crucial. It is completely different from the old "check out" paradigm of many of the older systems. But much more powerful in terms of continuous integration.

[AnthonyD]

Hi All,

We are having the problem as well. Though this is our first experience with Flare so it's disappointing to say the least.

I am guessing that there hasn't been any progress made with this issue?

Madcap do support the integration with Flare don't they? So we should be able to expect some form of support from them. Can I ask what types of things they have suggested others try to resolve the issue?

Thanks,

AnthonyD

[sanjsrik]

If anyone can offer better documentation than what is in the product, I'd really appreciate it.

I am getting authentication issues with Flare and Git. I can get into my Git repository directly, can see files, do what I want, but using the same credentials causes Flare to tell me that it couldn't reach the server with a 404 error.

Oh, and then, when I tried to "unbind" the project from Git, Flare crashed.

Any help would be most appreciated.

I'm using Flare 11.1x

[Rona Kwestel]

I tried binding my Flare project to Git, only to discover that since Flare doesn't support ssh connections to the remote repository, it means that I can't push or pull. I also noticed that it slowed down the Flare UI somewhat, where you could watch it "redraw" the list of files/folders in the Content pane. Figuring I would be better off sticking with Cygwin for Git, and leaving Flare out of it, I tried unbinding the project from Git, only to find that it deleted my .git folder and my .gitignore file. I had to recreate my status - I unwisely did the unbind before committing/pushing a number of changes since the last push - by fetching and resetting to the origin from the last manual push.

Unbinding from source control should not delete anything.

[sanjsrik]

I tried. Boy, did I try. I finally gave up. I do not see how git and Flare can work together? I have YET to get past the authentication aspect of getting to my project. I can use anything else such as Git's web browsing tool, I can use almost anything else to see my git repository, but Flare cannot figure it out. Just can't. Maybe it's just refusing because I was mean to it, I'm not sure.

[Nita Beck]

I have Flare 11 and Git working well together, with my remote repository being hosted by BitBucket. Honestly, I don't know if it's using SSH protocol or not, but I've not had any issues. After setting up the empty repo in BitBucket, I bound the Flare project -- using Flare -- without problem and it's been behaving. (I can't say the same for Flare 11 and Subversion...)

[sanjsrik]

Oh, Nita, you smartie, I wish I had your luck. Truly, after 2.5 months of struggling with trying to figure out why Flare cannot seem to authenticate into git to bind, update, get, or otherwise branch anything between itself and git, I finally gave up. My IT folks just simply scratched their heads at the completely unintuitive interface and the oh-so-cryptic non-error messages that were never displayed.

I'm glad you had nothing but success, me, alas, not so much. I just finally had to give up and zip my content files and upload them directly into git.

[Nita Beck]

Let me add...

I had NO luck whatsoever implementing Flare with Git where I had to use SSH, not using BitBucket but trying to hit a remote repo set up by a friend of mine on his tightly-secured server. We absolutely could not get it to work and I gave up... if this is any (perverse) consolation. My friend, who's been a software developer for 35+ years was utterly aghast that MadCap hadn't figured out how to support SSH protocol. Frankly, he had some pretty harsh things to say.

[SusanL]

Nita --

Out of curiosity, do you just have one Flare project in your remote Git repository? I am not integrating Flare with Git since it wanted to make a separate repository out of each Flare project I wanted to bind (and I have about 70), but I am limited by our Git administrator to one repository.

I use SmartGit as an interface and it is working well outside of Flare -- so far, no troubles. I did put in a request to MadCap that there be a way to bind projects without having to make separate repositories for each one.

-Susan

[Nita Beck]

Susan, I can't answer your question yet as I've bound only one project so far to Git using BitBucket. I'll bind other projects as they come up for updating.

[sanjsrik]

Adding more to this. So from Madcap support, this is what I've learned so far about their git integration:

* It's very basic - straight from the tech support folks at Madcap
* it doesn't support branching unless you make a branch outside of flare and then get the master with the branches, which, I found is also not true, because it's just not working at all. At all.

This is what I've found so far in my own experience:

I have one project in git. It's on a subdirectory off of the root of C on my local machine, yet, I am constantly getting crashes telling me my path is too long. I'm clueless. I've copied the longest named file in the lowest directory I can find, and I see that I'm about 70 characters long including path, yet, flare crashes constantly telling me I'm near to the DOS threshold.

I have a master project, my colleague has a sub-project. I branched off of the master in git to include his in a branch. We were able to bind successfully ONE TIME after that, my colleague cannot commit a single file. His files DID check in the first time, and then, nothing. He is constantly prompted to enter his username/password and they never take. If I try to use my username and password on his machine, I get a 404 error that the repository or git cannot be reached. I can reach both the master and the branch from my machine. Is this because we're trying to bind to the same project in git?? There's NOTHING that tells me if this is not possible.

There are NO updates as to when the git integration will be made more robust. I see at least 10-15 crash messages a day in Flare that NEVER happened before binding to git.

Someone mentioned that they're using a third-party tool to checkin/out files in git. If anyone can point me to some that are fairly graphical and don't require a user learn the innards of git commands, I'd be very grateful (I know git, my colleague doesn't). I'm guessing there is no incentive for Madcap to let us know when bugs will be fixed or enhancements will be made?

[jjw]

I use Git Extensions.

There are also some free online interactive Git tutorials - for example at Code School (which has lots of cool stuff) and coming soon at Codeacademy.

[mmdintexas]

We are having many struggles using Git and Flare and would appreciate some help.

With Flare: I'm seeing significant performance issues, I can't update the comment field of my conditions nor can I add or change conditions. I have a task a day that will cause Flare to crash, that task could be Save or insert an image. Changing a file name or creating a new topic can take a good 5 or 10 minutes! It is quite friendly when I commit my daily changes.

I use Git GUI to push (to bitbucket). My colleague was able to push his files exactly 1 time, since then he has not been able to push any files, he does not see which files are checked out either.

Are we better off not using the Git integration? Does it resolve the performance issues? And, is anyone doing this successfully with multiple authors?

Thanks!

[kkelleher]

It's hard to say whether your problem is related to the source control+Flare hanging issue several users have reported, but you can:
- Look in your Windows Event Viewer and see if there are any interesting errors around the time that Flare hung.
- Look in your project folder and, if you see the FileSynch folder, delete it.

At any rate,

Thanks,

Kristen

[Chris B]

I've given Git a try with Flare and at least for my large project it just won't work. I might get commits to happen locally for awhile, but ultimately it's too slow and fails too many times to be something that I can deploy on an actual working/production system.

Has anyone had better luck with TFS?

Thanks,

Chris

[RamonS]

I started using TFS with a project and that works out well so far. My project is fairly small and I am the lone writer, so it might not be the best example.

[stownsendaw]

I've given Git a try with Flare and at least for my large project it just won't work. I might get commits to happen locally for awhile, but ultimately it's too slow and fails too many times to be something that I can deploy on an actual working/production system.

Has anyone had better luck with TFS?

Thanks,

Chris

Same here, Chris. I've contacted Flare support several times over the last year or so and what we found is that in a Flare project with a large amount of files the performance is horrendous. The whole commit + check in procedure can take up to a minute, and getting latest can take a long time, too. With a large team of writers and a large collection of topics there's no way this would work. Especially since each commit + check in requires you to get latest!

TFS seems much better suited to our needs, but we're being kicked off our TFS production server, so I'm hoping Flare 12 fixes some of these huge performance gaps.

[Tova Cohen]

Has anyone considered using Git with just a master and then using conditions rather than branches?

I've been asked to look into this. We are using git with Flare 11.1 and have found that merging branches is not correctly resolving conflicts all the time.

Thanks,
Tova