Flare and GIT

[DocuWil]

Hi,

I am a newbie in this kind of area.
At my company the programmers work with GIT.
Does anyone of you has experience with Flare and GIT?

[Graham Campbell]

Hi Wil,

Did you ever get anywhere with Git in Flare? My developers have all moved across from SVN to Git and, in the interests of being a team player, I'm keen to follow suit.

I've done some searching this morning and found only Visual Studio plug ins, but nothing generic (like TamTamSVN or PushOK which can both be used to integrate SVN with Flare).

I'll post again if I find anything myself.

[Graham Campbell]

Hmm, actually it seems PushOK do actually provide a Git plug in: http://www.pushok.com/soft_git.php

I've had shaky experiences of their SVN plug in in the past but, as I've posted on these forums in the past, I've eventually got it working.

I might spend some time with the trial version to determine if it's worth the effort!

[DocuWil]

Hi Graham,

Thanks,

Did you ever get anywhere with Git in Flare?

So far I didn't get any further.
And ... at this moment the issue is a little bit delayed, due to the fact that I am very busy.
But I am glad to read that the issue is going on at your place.
I will be very keen on your progress. Later on I can jump on and write my experiances.

[Graham Campbell]

Wil, I spent an hour or so using the PushOK plug in and it's as broken as I had feared it would be.

*** FULL DISCLOSURE ***
To be fair to PushOK, the only version of the plug in they have available is a release candidate, and they don't list Flare as one of their supported platforms. Also, I'm no professional reviewer of software, but I am the one paying for it!

In short, this left me wanting. Badly.

On the plus side it seems to manage individuals files (topics, targets, TOCs and what have you) alright. But that's it.

It can't handle simple operations like adding a subdirectory and renaming/moving files was just not possible. It completely fell over, even to the point where I had to restart Flare. This only happened once, but ideally it shouldn't have happened at all of course!

What was a huge surprise was the complete lack of any interaction with your central Git repository. The PushOK plug in doesn't even let you add the details of your central repository to commit your changes to. You can only directly manage your local Git which is just poor in my opinion. I was hoping for a two-layer integration of Git right in the Flare editor, but it just doesn't do it.

I emailed the author of the TamTamSVN plug in to ask if he has any plans to write his own Git plug in. His SVN plug in was so good I fancied using something he developed rather than relying on the PushOK lot once again. His response:

No plans at this time. There’s probably not a large market for such a plug-in so someone would need to write it for free.


Dave.

And I totally get where he's coming from. He needs to make a profit from what he does, so fair play to him for keeping to what pays the bills.

Looks like we might be out of luck here Wil!

[DocuWil]

Thanks Graham,

I was afread so.
Some weeks ago my reseller had a meeting with MadCap and I asked him to drop this question of GIT. Like if there was experience or so.
The answer was that it should go in principle, but they had no experience.
And indeed, the market is too small to get it going soon.
Anyway, if there is something going at my place I will inform you.

[Graham Campbell]

Meanwhile, I've been using Git Extensions which is a pretty neat GUI for using Git. It's not integrated with Flare in any way, but it does present a pretty decent interface to use Git with and allows me to forget all those nasty command line entries I'd otherwise need.

I originally had some teething troubles, mostly to do with my permissions on our internal servers not being set correctly, but it now seems to work just fine. I will say, though, that if an error does occur it is pretty rubbish at giving you anything like a specific reason why a push or clone operation failed.

For that I had to use the command line to figure out precisely where it was failing. Otherwise though it does a great job.

Grab if from here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gitextensions/

[DocuWil]

That is great Graham, thank you very much.

I will put it through to my colleauges.
I come back when I have somthing to report.

Have a nice Christmas and all good for 2011

[andrew_s]

We are moving from SVN to GIT in the near future, and as such, I'm not going to spend any time in trying to configure source control from Flare V7 into SVN. It seems (at least from this and other threads here) that there is no out-of-the-box connection between Flare and GIT. Not being of a developer mindset, I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences, and how you were able to accomplish that task. Also, is there something specific I need to ask our admins regarding our implementation of GIT for this to work?

Currently I'm just using a network share to save each Flare .zip but obviously that's not a great solution.

Thanks.

[Graham Campbell]

Hi Andrew. Unfortunately I never found a solution to using an in-Flare UI GIT management piece of software.

I've just learned to use GIT at the command line and check my docs in and out manually. Not ideal for those of us used to the GUI environments of TortoiseSVN and the like.

I hope your GIT experiences go well.

[WhyUNoWork]

Just FYI...Eclipse also has a GIT plug-in called EGit. This is what I use currently.

http://www.eclipse.org/egit/

Again it's a relatively simple WYSIWYG option for Git if you're not into Git Bash and CLI commands. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Flare supports EGit (or any other Git plug-in). You'd think they'd support it as a "Third Party Plug-In" but it doesn't.

[Edit: For the curious (like me) Flare still doesn't support Git as a third-party plug-in in version 8.]

[Rona Kwestel]

Just wondering if any further developments have been made in terms of integrating Flare with Git. We are going to start moving over to Flare for our product Help (and possibly our KB as well), and we're switching over from SourceIntegrity to Git for our source control, and I was hoping to see more support for using Git as the source control for Flare projects.

In the meanwhile, there is a version of Tortoise for Git, so you can use a GUI interface instead of the command line: http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/.

[doc_guy]

I found out that my group is moving from SVN to GIT in the near future. In fact, they are going to totally take down the SVN server, so I'm going to be forced to make a change in how I do source control with Flare.

I'd encourage anybody who has interest in GIT/Flare integration to PLEASE log a feature request with MadCap: https://www.madcapsoftware.com/feedback ... quest.aspx

Best wishes,

-Paul Pehrson

[NAPNAM]

This guest post recently appeared on the MadBlog:

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/blog/2013 ... fY.twitter

Cheers,

Patrick

[sdcinvan]

Considering that this conversation about git integration has been going on for over three years (and three major revisions), should I be concerned that MadCap doesn't listen to their customers?

Having been a very long-time user of Adobe FrameMaker and Trivantis Lectora, I am all too familiar with companies that don't move very quickly (seemingly ignore important customer requests).

git is an important feature for my company as well. I asked about this but, to be expected, the answer was fairly non-committal. Maybe in version 10, maybe not.

In the meantime, I am trying to gather as much information as is available that will help me with a work-around.

For instance, there were some earlier none-too-positive comments about http://www.pushok.com/soft_git.php but I am puzzled... because his release notes indicate that MadCap Flare compatibility was added in 2007.

Any assistance will be appreciated as I am days away from purchasing MadPak.

[RamonS]

Considering that this conversation about git integration has been going on for over three years (and three major revisions), should I be concerned that MadCap doesn't listen to their customers?

I cannot speak for MadCap, but I am sure that the list of "Why don't you do this...?" requests is long enough to wrap the entire San Diego region in it. MadCap tends to oil those wheels that squeak the loudest, so I suggest adding your voice in form of a feature request here: https://www.madcapsoftware.com/feedback ... quest.aspx
If MadCap would have just followed my proposal by providing a means to specify shell commands for means of interacting with source control then we would not have this discussion! That way at least the most important functions of retrieving latest, checking out, and committing changes would be customizable to any source control system that can be operated via command line. That said, originally there was no support for Subversion, people asked for it, MadCap put it in. They are listening to what customers want, but time and other resource constraints make it difficult to make everyone happy. I think adding ribbon UI and QR codes was a total waste of effort, but who knows how many folks wanted that.
That aside, you can use Git with Flare right now as detailed in the blog post. There is no integration with Git, so it lacks the convenience, but it is not as that it absolutely does not work.

[sdcinvan]

Thanks for your reply RamonS.

I think adding ribbon UI and QR codes was a total waste of effort

Giving MadCap the benefit of the doubt, probably a different team (UI team) that would normally have nothing to do with versioning (somewhat more complicated). But QR codes? I am sure it was nothing more than a library and a week's worth of work but why QR codes integration? How did that project/Flare update get approved over their likely large list of requested features?

You'd think that there is a positive ROI to providing git integration in Flare. In my situation, it was almost a make/break deal. The sales person (at MadCap) made no commitments but did assure me that it was on the RADAR and important. I took this information to my decision makers to make the purchase of MadPak more palatable. In the meantime, I am preparing by looking for anything I can find on git and Flare... such as:
http://www.madcapsoftware.com/blog/2013 ... fY.twitter
it is a start but I need more information.

I am also looking for instructions on how to pull from the git repository, edit the xml is a plain text editor, and produce a document directly from Flare's CLI.
So far, I have found this thread: http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... &sk=t&sd=a (but this is OT)

[RamonS]

You'd think that there is a positive ROI to providing git integration in Flare.

I am sure the MadCappers did the math, there may be ROI for you and many others, but that may not mean ROI for MadCap. As sad as it sounds, well managed companies do not chase every opportunity. I came across a few cases where we walked away from jobs rather than to take them because it freed us up to do two or three other things that had a much bigger impact overall. Sure, the one or the other customer may not like that and I truly feel for them, but there are just 24 hours and a night per day. Not sure if that is the case with git integration and I bet MadCap won't tell anyway.

As far as editing the XML externally from Flare, it surely is possible, but you need to watch carefully that it doesn't bork up stuff for Flare.

[sdcinvan]

You'd think that there is a positive ROI to providing git integration in Flare.

I am sure the MadCappers did the math, there may be ROI for you and many others, but that may not mean ROI for MadCap. As sad as it sounds, well managed companies do not chase every opportunity. I came across a few cases where we walked away from jobs rather than to take them because it freed us up to do two or three other things that had a much bigger impact overall. Sure, the one or the other customer may not like that and I truly feel for them, but there are just 24 hours and a night per day. Not sure if that is the case with git integration and I bet MadCap won't tell anyway.

As far as editing the XML externally from Flare, it surely is possible, but you need to watch carefully that it doesn't bork up stuff for Flare.

Well, I am reasonably happy with the way Flare works for now... I have not purchased the MadPak yet (still in the proving phase for the stakeholders)... my biggest challenge right now is convincing them that we need the maintenance contract. As much as I trust this community will be there to help me, I really, really want that corporate line-line, at least, for the first year. Any advice is welcome. The problem is that everyone I work with (right to the top) are Linux people and they are simply not impressed with a $599 maintenance fee, they see it as somewhat dishonest. I might partially agree but most similar companies do this too! Oh how I wish the Bronze maintenance fee was only 25% of the cost of the perpetual license (rather than 50%).

Not a rant, really.

I do have a feeling that I will not get approval for the maintenance contract because I wasn't successful in proving the ROI.

[RamonS]

The biggest argument for the maintenance plan is that you will get the next version as part of the deal. Otherwise you'd have to buy it. Present it in this way: you prebuy the next version and in return get a year of free support. As far as the Linux folks go, ask them how RedHat makes all that money....mainly from service contracts and support plans. The entire Linux business end is based on selling service and support as there is no charge for the product itself (with a few exceptions). If anything, they should grill you about Flare not being open-source.

[ebill]

We are beginning to use Git for version control. Just starting to get familiar and in preparing my .gitignore file I'm using something like this to test:

Output/
*.pdf
Project/Users/
Analyzer/
*.exe
*.bin

Question is should I also include the Analyzer directory and any other addon programs like Contributor etc.?
Has anyone had experience with this?

Using Tortoise Git for implementation on a Windows 7 machine.

Edward B

[sdcinvan]

We are beginning to use Git for version control. Just starting to get familiar and in preparing my .gitignore file I'm using something like this to test:

Output/
*.pdf
Project/Users/
Analyzer/
*.exe
*.bin

Question is should I also include the Analyzer directory and any other addon programs like Contributor etc.?
Has anyone had experience with this?

Using Tortoise Git for implementation on a Windows 7 machine.

Edward B

Hello Edward,

If you can make Tortoise work reliably, kudos! I gave up on Tortoise and decided to just go manual with the Cygwin terminal.

No, you won't need to include the Analyzer folder.

Here is my git ignore list:

Code: Select all

# Main Flare project subfolders ignore list
Analyzer
FileSync
Output
Project/Reports
Project/Users
Project/Advanced
Project/ConditionTagSets
Project/Glossaries
Project/Skins
Project/VariableSets
*.flprjzip
# Outside Flare folder hierarchy
# Within Flare folder hierarchy - projects on hold or scratch folders

[ebill]

Thanks, for the help. We are just starting to test so will post any issues as we see them.
I placed a request with MadCap to integrate Git. Anyone else using it should also. The more requests from users, the more likely it will get done.

Edward B

[sdcinvan]

Thanks, for the help. We are just starting to test so will post any issues as we see them.
I placed a request with MadCap to integrate Git. Anyone else using it should also. The more requests from users, the more likely it will get done.

Edward B

After a recent conversation with MadCap support, I suspect that there are not enough git users (compared to other version control tools) to compel MadCap to add git support. Don't hold your breath.

[Msquared]

I had a big moan about poor Perforce support in earlier versions of Flare - you could do it via the Microsoft API but not directly, and that was extremely buggy, crashed frequently, even when doing quite innocuous things, and left you with projects that couldn't be opened again after some crashes. Madcap listened, and fixed some of the worst bugs, and now in version 10, it's a directly supported source control system.