MadCap Software Forums

Can someone please give me a helping hand to get started?

In the past, in our multi-author environment, we used VSS to check in/out zip files of our projects. I've decided to take the plunge and use Flare's integration.

I bind a project fine, and can happily check in/out on my PC, but when other authors attempt to check out or import that project, they can only get the .flpj file and an empty folder structure (i.e. Contents folder but no topics in it) created on their PC.

Do they need an existing copy of the project on their machine before they attempt to check it out?

Thanks

Dan

Yep.

You need to create workspaces etc like you would if VSS was controlling a Visual Studio project.

HTH

No, they shouldn't need to do anything special to get it working.

To get a project from VSS, we just use Import Project > Import from Source Control.
We don't have to open up VSS or do anything with it to get it all working.

It's interesting that you say that Dave - that is exactly what we are doing. The result is that the flprj file is checked out OK but none of the contents of the Contents and Project folders follow; so when in Flare, the project looks empty.
The VSS databases are stored over a network, but i guess this is pretty common of most VSS/Flare setups?

I'm a bit stumped as it just works for us without any hitches, what happens if you do a Get latest version all - does it get all the files?

Oddly enough, i tried the Get All... option about ten times, and one time it did actually collect the content files (but not the project files) after a v.long wait. I'm wondering if my request is timing out???

Hi,

Unless your projects are small, you'll rapidly overrun VSS's capability. When you hit 9-10,000 it starts bogging down really bad. Make sure you don't put the Analyzer\, Output\, or Project\Users\ directories under source control. That will cause you problems.

Flare works pretty well with VSS the last time I tried it. Beyond VSS being dog slow on a large project, it's not too bad.

I'm waiting patiently for Team Server.....

Our largest project has around 3,000 topics, and we've no problem at all with that.
I don't have anything with 10,000 topics, and don't think I ever will - that seems pretty large, to me anyway!

If you bind the project to VSS through Flare, then the Analyzer, Output, and Project\Users folders won't be included.

Yep, been waiting to hear news about Team Server for a while now!

I was testing with a project containing 3 topics(!), so perhaps performance is not the problem here.

Let's hope Support can come up with a solution (or Team Server) pretty soon.

As an update to this, Support seem to put it down to the version of VSS i'm using. I use version 6.

I could be wrong, but i don't seem to remember reading anywhere in the help that Source Control was only compatible with VSS 2005 onwards?!

Neither have I. When I did my testing on VSS, it was on V6. But that was several years back.

You probably didn't read it anywhere - the Flare system requirements doesn't even mention which source control tools are supported, never mind version numbers.