SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

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kwag_myers
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SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by kwag_myers »

I may be complicating the simple, but wondering if there is a way to put just my outputs in the trunk folder?

I use a branch for development and I tag each release. Up until now I've never had much use for a trunk folder. The idea we're working on is for the developers to include my trunk folder in their builds. Since the project is translated, I wonder if there is a way for me to set up the trunk folder so that it has just the output for each translation?

Since each translation is it's own Flare project, I'm not sure how difficult it's going to be for the Dev Team to drill down into the Output folder of each. It may just be a matter of scripting the file directories.

Or should I set up a folder to publish to and check that into my trunk? I might try that and see how it goes.
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Nita Beck
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by Nita Beck »

Standard Subversion convention is that the trunk is for your main line of development, branches are, well, branches off the trunk whose changes are periodically merged back to the trunk, and a tag is a "named snapshot" or copy of the trunk (typically, although it could be of a branch) at a given point in time. I would never, ever put output in the trunk. If you want, you could create a fourth folder in your SVN repo that sits alongside the \trunk, \branches\ and \tags folder, perhaps called something like \output, in which you put the output.

All that said, your developers might instead want you to put output someplace outside of Subversion in a designated place from which they go fetch the output to include in their builds. For example, for one of my clients, we put our Flare output in a "staging" area (folder), having nothing whatsoever to do with our source file repository in SVN.
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kwag_myers
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by kwag_myers »

I understand the concept of trunk, branches, and tags (thank you), I just don't see the advantage for a single writer to work in a branch and merge into the trunk. I'm not going to break the build with my Flare project, so there really isn't (in my opinion) the need for using branches to protect the trunk.

When you say you don't put output in the trunk, does that mean you don't have the entire project in there? I have one project that uses Perforce and they insist the whole project be checked in. This is where they get the output for the build, directly out of Perforce. I've been using shared drives for years, but this project got me wondering if this was a better way.
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Nita Beck
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by Nita Beck »

kwag_myers wrote:I understand the concept of trunk, branches, and tags (thank you), ...
I meant no disrespect. Speaking only for myself, when I answer a question on the forums, I try to be thorough for the sake of the entire community. It's highly likely that at some point, someone who knows nothing about SVN will read this thread and hopefully, will learn something.

In my Subversion practice, the authoring teams I'm on rarely use branches. We each have a working copy of the project that exists in the trunk, and we all get updates from and make commits to the trunk.

For those projects, we bound the projects to SVN originally from within Flare, so Flare bound only stuff in the Content Explorer and the Project Organizer. Flare "knows" not to bind the Output folder, Analyzer folder, and the Project>Users folder. So no, we don't put our Flare generated output in the trunk but we *do* have the whole project there, meaning all of the source files. (The best practice for those binding their projects with a different tool outside of Flare is to set up an "ignore" list that includes those three folders I just mentioned.)

I can't address why your devs want your output put in the trunk. Perhaps someone else who uses Subversion that way can weigh in.
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kkelleher
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by kkelleher »

Nita Beck wrote: I would never, ever put output in the trunk.
I'm curious about this comment. I can imagine not *needing* to check output into trunk, but I can't see the harm if you did. Am I missing something?
Nita Beck wrote:We each have a working copy of the project that exists in the trunk, and we all get updates from and make commits to the trunk.
I agree. On our team, we also have a PDF directory that is a sibling of our Flare directory where the projects sit. It's something of a 'suspenders and a belt' situation, as we can always go back to a specific revision of the project and rebuild the output, but since not all of our documentation goes into an install package, it's good to have the output squirreled away some place else in source control. It's come in handy a few times.

Thanks,

Kristen
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by kwag_myers »

Nita Beck wrote:I can't address why your devs want your output put in the trunk. Perhaps someone else who uses Subversion that way can weigh in.
My understanding is that they have it set up to grab specific directories out of Perforce when they do a build. Easy for them, but quite confusing to me.
kkelleher wrote:On our team, we also have a PDF directory that is a sibling of our Flare directory where the projects sit. It's something of a 'suspenders and a belt' situation, as we can always go back to a specific revision of the project and rebuild the output, but since not all of our documentation goes into an install package, it's good to have the output squirreled away some place else in source control. It's come in handy a few times.
Is this PDF instead of, or in addition to tagging each version release?
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

Kwag, could you create a different folder and ask your Devs to grab output from there? Or even could you PUBLISH to wherever Dev copies their stuff to? That way you get to control what goes in the build. Just a thought...
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kkelleher
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by kkelleher »

kwag_myers wrote:Is this PDF instead of, or in addition to tagging each version release?
It's in addition to tagging the trunk. Not all of our docs go into the software codeline, so we wanted to make sure there was a handy place to grab those PDFs. Since we also integrate SVN with Phabricator, people who don't have SVN can still easily browse and download past revisions of each doc.

Thanks,

Kristen
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by kwag_myers »

ChoccieMuffin wrote:Kwag, could you create a different folder and ask your Devs to grab output from there? Or even could you PUBLISH to wherever Dev copies their stuff to? That way you get to control what goes in the build. Just a thought...
Yeah, I do something like that now with most of my projects. Here's the issue: my employer has built the company by buying out a number of software developing companies and has done very little to provide a global share drive (other than Google Drive) where I can put files for everyone to access. For project A, I put output here. Project B, over there, etc. With Flare's Publish feature, it's really no big deal until the Dev Team member who knows where the files are decides to leave the company (which has happened several times, must be working them too hard).

The concept that the Perforce team has seems like a good one (if they can ever get it to work), and I was hoping to institute it globally, since all the development teams throughout the company can access the SVN server. I'm trying to develop a process that can be automated. It would seem that I might be better off leaving things as they are.

Thank you all for your input.
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ChoccieMuffin
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Re: SVN Trunk'ing Outputs Only

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

If you ADD a folder to SVN to contain your published output, publish stuff to that folder on your local drive and then check in the folder's content, you will indeed have a single place - which can be in Trunk - to contain your published outputs.
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