MadCap Software Forums

Hi All,

I need your wisdom, im a newbie to Flareand I have realized that although Flares/Subversion is good, using TortoiseSVN will allow me to Branch/Tag will give greater functionality

Does anyone know of an idiots guide to using tortoisesvn with Flare. (one that explains procedures on how to merge, branch and tag)

Thanks in advance
B

Welcome to the forums!

I don't know that there is such a guide. But I can offer some general advice, based on my experience using Flare, Subversion, and TortoiseSVN.

Use Flare to bind the project to the SVN repo, and then use it to commit, revert, get updates, etc. Use Flare also to import a project from the SVN repo.

But for all other operations (branching, merging, tagging), and with Flare CLOSED and all files committed, use TortoiseSVN. Flare cannot do any of those SVN operations on its own. If you need to work in a branch, you will end up with two working copies of the Flare project on your computer, one pointing to the trunk and one pointing to the branch. Later, when you need to merge changes made in the branch back into the trunk (or from one branch to another branch, or from the trunk to the branch... whichever direction it is you need to go), first make sure both of your working copies have the latest updates. Then, with Flare CLOSED, use TortoiseSVN to handle the merging, which BTW you do within Windows Explorer, not in the repo. The process is all documented in TortoiseSVN's Help system.

I hope this helps. I know it's rather a bit of shorthand.

Great thank you, that has answered a few questions.

Why does flare need to be closed to perform the branch/tag/merge process?


Ben

In my experience, Flare "gets confused" with a project's sync status with the SVN repo if, while Flare is open, various operations are performed "outside" of it (i.e., performed with TortoiseSVN).

I found this forum as we were seeing some unexpected results using a global/gpl project in SVN.
Still need to find a fool proof method for this process, however..

We find that Flare gets confused with the sync status fairly regularly in general (not just if you perform operations outside of Flare using TortoiseSVN).
e.g Regularly another writer will have committed some files back to the server. If I try and get the files from the server using Flare, Flare says there are no updates available. But sure enough, if I go to TortoiseSVN and 'SVN Update', all of the new files are downloaded from the server.

We periodically delete the FileSync folder from the Flare projects on the local PC, which seems to help.

*Flare 2017 R3

We use TortoiseSVN for keeping our multiuser Flare synchronized, and for version control. The file synchronization is handled totally by SVN (with Flare closed). Works well.

We do not map from our Flare project to any external files and thus don't have a FileSync directory.

We don't use Flare's internal connection to SVN, and do all source control stuff in Tortoise. I had heard so many people saying that using SVN in Flare caused performance issues, and we've now got used to doing it this way. Nita's description sounds so solid though, that I might even consider swapping!