800+ .props files should NOT be in TFS

[phriend_o_phlair]

Well. I was playing around with some conditionalizing, and ended up foolishly generating hundreds of props files. My predecessor left a small mountain of images in the root folder, so, of course, Flare created this kind of deal:

imgs_and_props.png

Well, no big deal. Or so I thought. I figured I'd just undo the conditionalizing. I did. Then, I checked in a few topic edits that were legit and desired.

Now, source control (TFS) is chock full of these .props files, and it has impacted the output in our build environment. FUN.

The .props files do not show in Flare on my computer.

So, what do I do? Merely rolling the project back is extremely undesirable. Can I just delete all these props files? Does anyone have a reference for editing at a fairly granular level the conditionalizing elements? Advice on how to clean this up?

Should I just check in everything I have, execute a "get," and work from there? I REALLY don't want to keep these .props files.

Thanks!

[SteveS]

I'm not sure the .props files are a result of your experimentation.

.props files (properties) are created when an image is edited using Capture. It contains the original images plus all the editing (think similar to layers). It allows you to go back to the original image and start from fresh with your image manipulation.

I also think the .props file is something to keep in source control. Although you can make a screen capture, book it into source control, edit the image, and then updtae source control you do not have the same level of control as you would if you reloaded the image into Capture.

HTH

[wclass]

.props files are also created when you put a condition on a folder, or on an image file.

[NorthEast]

The props files do contain condition information (and file tags too) - presumably it works this way because Flare can't add the condition information to image and other non-text files, like it can with text-based topic and project files.

Props files are just plain text XML files though, so it's easy to see what's set in them and check if they're blank. I don't think removing the condition removes the props file, so you may just have a lot of files containing something like this:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<fileProperties conditions="" />

Have a look at the files - if you've only set conditions, and don't use Capture, then it's probably safe to delete them.

[Paul Griffiths]

What would be nice is an option in Flare to (automatically?) delete .props files that have no information in them. I feel a feature request coming on ...

[phriend_o_phlair]

Well, this is all good information! Very informative. Thanks, everyone! I'm going to have to consider what I want to do here. I experimented a bit with adding and removing some of the CBT's within the application. I now have a boatload of empty .props files, but the outputs were saved.

(This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "mad props," as I am literally mad at my props.)

As it turns out, federal regulatory changes are going to impact our industry in a year, so I'll be rewriting everything across our suite of software products. This will also necessitate that I do some IA work here and set up a better system for conditionalizing our material; hopefully we'll probably end up in a better place in 2015. I'm going to submit a feature request for the whole "delete empty props files that are... empty" thing.

Cheers!