2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

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Wyatt Stueven
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2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by Wyatt Stueven »

Good Morning All,

My company has published a certain way for a while and it has always worked. With the newest update all of my destinations are broken and when I try to publish I get the message "Publish failed: The given key was not present in the dictionary" We used to select origin as our remote repository but that option no longer exists. Any ideas?
Nita Beck
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by Nita Beck »

MadCap identified an issue with Git source control interaction and has termporarily stopped offering 2021 r3 while they work on a solution. In the meantime, you should roll back to 2021 r2 and await MadCap's release of the corrected version of r3. If you need the installer for r2, go here and supply your license key: https://www.madcapsoftware.com/download ... -products/

See also community member's Paul Perhson's discussion at viewtopic.php?f=13&t=33607.

HTH
Nita
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RETIRED, but still fond of all the Flare friends I've made. See you around now and then!
mjbowerman
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by mjbowerman »

Flare 2021 R3 Source Control with Perforce is also broken. Been dealing with a world of woe since upgrading on 1/12/22. Reverting back to R2 now.
Last edited by mjbowerman on Fri Mar 04, 2022 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Wyatt Stueven
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by Wyatt Stueven »

mjbowerman wrote:Flare 2021 R3 Source Control with Perforce is also broken. Been dealing with a world of woe since upgrading on 1/12/21. Reverting back to R2 now.
Be aware that when reverting back to R2 any project you in which you interacted with the destination will have a hidden .git folder that will not let you publish if you are trying to send it to remote. You will have to unbind it as a subrepository if it did so to be able to publish again. Make sure to check the config files too in case it created something along the lines of a #gitignore criteria inside. Good luck to the rest of you.
doloremipsum
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by doloremipsum »

It looks like there's a new R3 version out - who's going to bite the bullet and try upgrading? If you do, report back on whether the problems are solved :P
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andy_smith
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by andy_smith »

Like some sort of fool I instantly installed the Flare 2021 r3 update today. We use Git here but we have never used the Git tools in Flare. We treat the files in our Git folder as standalone local files and perform git push/pull updates at the beginning and end of every day.
After running the Flare 2021 r3 update today I started getting messages asking me if I want to pull the latest repository whenever I start Flare. To which I said no as I had done that this morning. I’ve never seen this before.
When I open a target (I’ve not see the popup on any other files yet) it’s asking for public and private keys on a popup titled Certificate Specification. I seem to have been able to cancel out of these popups and get to my Target file.
These popups seem to have gone away now although I may not have triggered them.
As a team we use Git outside of Flare but Flare 2021 r3 seem to be imposing its Git functionality on me. Is this a new default? Can I switch Git off?
I notice that this thread started in December. I got the upgrade notification today, 19th January. Are people still rolling this back? How is the rollback performed, through the Windows control panel or is there a feature within Flare?

[Edit] I've since noticed that I'm getting a red tick in the file name tab at the top of the main edit window (not in all files though, it doesn't appear in Targets). I've googled that and discovered that this indicates I'm working on a file that has been checked out. This is a little alarming as I should only be working with files on my C drive.
I'm on UK time (UTC+0). I work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so I may not see replies outside of those days.
ruusuvuori
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by ruusuvuori »

It looks like there's a new R3 version out - who's going to bite the bullet and try upgrading? If you do, report back on whether the problems are solved :P
I think I managed to install this one (yesterday), and considering that a) I am using Git outside Flare, b) I have .gitignore in the root of my repo (covering all of what few projects I have), and c) that Flare now insists adding another .gitignore into a project folder, I'd hazard that to be a no? :roll:

Incidentally, you can ignore a .gitignore file in a .gitignore file. :)
jhmcmullen
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by jhmcmullen »

Frankly, I don't know any more if I've upgraded, because this whole thing has been...frustrating.

Context: We use Git, but we have always used it outside of Flare, with Sourcetree or with the command line tools, depending on the comfort level of the individual writer. With the new version, it asks to pull the current version of the source (as others have noted). Unless you're specifically using Glaregit, don't: it points to the MadCap git repository, which is probably not what you want.

It will point to your git repository if you import the project, but (in the copious free time I have to research such things) it puts only the Contents of the /Content directory under source control. This is the big loser for us, because we put much of /Project under source control so we can restore old target files when we reproduce an older document. (Possibly an incorrect setup but legacy now: the appropriate values for variables are in the .fltar files, and the variable files just create placeholders.)

So the Flare version of Git is not useful to us, and every time we open the project at the beginning of the day it asks us if we want to pull the latest version, which is annoying and time-consuming because it has to time out.

BUT...if we unbind the project from source control, our existing git doesn't work because it removes .git/ and .gitignore.

I tried unbinding in a separate clone and then copying the resultant project file, but that didn't seem to have an effect. Removing the project attribute that unbinding seems to remove does not, by itself, have an effect, and I can't see any other diffs between the two clones (one "real", one non-git-enabled now). So I'm annoyed and frustrated and I've wasted several hours trying to fix this for me and for the new employee.

No, I don't think it's working well at all for our situation (we use git, we use git with a different repository, we include some /Project/ files like targets, variables, and TOCs under source control). Perhaps it's all fixable, but I haven't yet found a reference document (not a video!) that describes how it works.

EDITED AFTER ANOTHER TEST: if the folder contains a .git folder, it will ask if you want to pull files. It doesn't seem to have the concept of "I don't want to use YOUR git." This moves beyond annoyance to active nuisance. I suppose if we moved all Flare projects one level deeper in the repository (so the repo install with install/installguide.flprj became install/project/installguide.flprj), that might fix it but that would cause *everything* to get a new version and is not acceptable. A single attribute in the .flprj file like "ScanForGitDirectory=false" would be sufficient. Maybe there's a more general version, but that would solve my issue.
sarrantsvt
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by sarrantsvt »

Have there been any developments or movement on the problems caused by the change in behavior with Git? I have read different things on Slack and other areas. One person reported that he was told that it is working as designed and is not a bug, hence there is nothing to be fixed.
Doing Online Help since 1990. I remember "dots" .........
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Wyatt Stueven
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by Wyatt Stueven »

sarrantsvt wrote:Have there been any developments or movement on the problems caused by the change in behavior with Git? I have read different things on Slack and other areas. One person reported that he was told that it is working as designed and is not a bug, hence there is nothing to be fixed.

I'm still running with Flare 2021 r2 as upgrading to r3 seems to force you to use Flare's Git Repo and not the one you may already have made. It's a cool piece of equipment but if you use flare in any other capacity not strictly outlined by the new version you're just SOL. Not sure if there's any plan to "fix it" as it's not technically a bug, just a major inconvenience for anyone using flare differently.
sarrantsvt
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Re: 2021 R3 Source Control is Broken

Post by sarrantsvt »

It looks like the issues with Git (and other source control) and Flare are resolved with the latest release, Flare 2022. You can now disable the bind detection and disable source control providers, both of which seemed to cause the problems we were having. I spent time this weekend testing copies of the same source and content on the 2021 r2 release and the 2022 release. Without going into a lot of detail, it looks like it works and we're going to go over this at a team meeting and make the decision to upgrade.
Doing Online Help since 1990. I remember "dots" .........
Got a bug? https://www.madcapsoftware.com/feedback/bugs/
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