Git integration enhancement

[SusanL]

I have submitted a request to MadCap for an enhancement for the Flare integration with Git. After a developer and I spent time looking at how the Git integration works in Flare 11.1, we came to the conclusion that it wouldn't work for us. Documentation is assigned one repository on the remote server -- and Flare binds its projects as separate Git repositories, which would make 70+ repositories in our case. Our Git administrator didn't want that much clutter.

I have asked Flare for an enhancement so that it could integrate with a single Git repository containing multiple Flare projects. Not sure if it's possible, but thought I would ask.

FWIW, Flare worked nicely for us when we bound a project as a repository. We just don't want that many Git repositories, so we will be working with Git outside of Flare. I've been using TFS, but the rest of the development team moved to Git and the doc needed to follow along. It's been a learning experience!

Susan

[sanjsrik]

I just read this and was wondering (yes, I know, I'm almost 5 months after you posted this), why not create a single project, have multiple books, and conditionalize the books based on targets? Your team would then work in a single project, but one person whomever it is that sets up the project would then make that book conditional to publish to a single target. You could do this for a number of other reasons as well:

* Topics could be shared across all your writers for checking
* You can eliminate the need for multiple repositories
* Create cross-references that may be relevant across systems in the future
...

I am guessing there are other reasons to have this work this way. The argument against this approach would be that the system may become quite large. You'd have to make sure that merge conflicts (if any happen, which wouldn't if you're all working in your own books), you could (as my colleague and I do), share a single repository of variables as well as a single library of snippets (eliminating reuse of the same terminology).

Just a thought.

[SusanL]

Good question, but the reason we would not want to do that is size, as you mentioned, and that I need to keep our product lines separate. The documentation Git repository contains three different product lines, with multiple versions of each. I've gotten very used to using the SmartGit application outside of Flare, and it does a very good job. I am the sole writer, and this just seems the easiest way to work with Git at the moment.

[stownsendaw]

Can't you just put all your Git Repos inside of a 'Project' titled Documentation?

Why would the Git Admin care if there's clutter inside of a folder that only you use?