Flare and GIT

[sdcinvan]

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.

Hello Marjorie,

There is no doubt that the evolution of MadCap Flare is exciting. The significant number of important updates since last September was a huge selling point in convincing my company to purchase another year of maintenance. That is a fairly big deal considering that we are almost entirely Linux based and companies like ours, don't pay for maintenance packages (especially when they are nearly 1/2 the price of the initial product cost).

[doc_guy]

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

Why are you ignoring so may files in the Project section? I assume you have a good reason, which is why I'm asking My concern is that the Advanced folder includes File tag information, as well as all the pieces that set up and control context sensitive help. Those are critical to your project once you've gone down the context-sensitive help path. I also question the wisdom of ignoring Condition Tag Sets, Glossaries, Skins, and Variable Sets. Those all have project-critical information that would leave your project incomplete and broken if you tried to restore from source control without a way to restore those files.

The MadCap supported answer is that you can safely ignore the following:

/Analyzer
/Output
/Project/Advanced/Users

Other folders like the /Reports/ folder aren't critical to the project structure, so they can be left out at your discretion. But be careful what you put on the ignore list outside of those four folders, as you may not be able to restore your project from source control if other folders are missing. Well, I guess it will restore, but you will be missing project-critical files that will break the build process and require a lot of manual work to replace.

[doc_guy]

After a recent conversation with MadCap support, I suspect that there are enough git users (also using Flare) to them to make this effort. Don't hold your breath.

Sorry. I didn't follow. MC Support suggested that there ARE enough or there AREN'T enough. I was unclear because in the ending you say not to hold your breath, and gave a frowny face, which makes me think you meant that there AREN'T enough.

[sdcinvan]

After a recent conversation with MadCap support, I suspect that there are enough git users (also using Flare) to them to make this effort. Don't hold your breath.

Sorry. I didn't follow. MC Support suggested that there ARE enough or there AREN'T enough. I was unclear because in the ending you say not to hold your breath, and gave a frowny face, which makes me think you meant that there AREN'T enough.

Thanks... correction made.

[sdcinvan]

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

Why are you ignoring so may files in the Project section? I assume you have a good reason, which is why I'm asking My concern is that the Advanced folder includes File tag information, as well as all the pieces that set up and control context sensitive help. Those are critical to your project once you've gone down the context-sensitive help path. I also question the wisdom of ignoring Condition Tag Sets, Glossaries, Skins, and Variable Sets. Those all have project-critical information that would leave your project incomplete and broken if you tried to restore from source control without a way to restore those files.

The MadCap supported answer is that you can safely ignore the following:

/Analyzer
/Output
/Project/Advanced/Users

Other folders like the /Reports/ folder aren't critical to the project structure, so they can be left out at your discretion. But be careful what you put on the ignore list outside of those four folders, as you may not be able to restore your project from source control if other folders are missing. Well, I guess it will restore, but you will be missing project-critical files that will break the build process and require a lot of manual work to replace.

Thanks Paul.

I based my gitignore off the information I found on this page:
http://theredchicken.com/category/madcap-2

*BUT* I built this gitignore list when I was still a novice. Huh... I agree with you. Why am I ignoring some critical sections? I'm going to immediately delete the gitignore sections:
Project/Advanced
Project/ConditionTagSets
Project/Glossaries
Project/Skins
Project/VariableSets

Good thing I also do a full nightly backup, as well.

Thanks for pointing this out.

[doc_guy]

Glad it was helpful. I think you could legitimately ignore those folders in source control if your project was connected to a global project (via global project linking), and if all the content from those folders was coming from the global project. This is why I hate looking back at older work because I can only see what I should have done differently based on what I know NOW that I didn't know THEN. I still find that I'm learning stuff every day!