Tutorial: QWin Basics

Creating Your First QVCS Project with QWin

Before you can store any revision information with QVCS, you must first define a project. To do so, use the following steps:

• Select the Project→New→New Project menu command. This will launch the New Project wizard.
• The "Define Project Name" wizard page asks you to define the name of the project. A project name can be composed of any characters that you find useful. For this tutorial, let's define the project name as "Test Project." Once you've entered a name, click the "Next" button.

  

• The "Define Workfile location" wizard page asks you to define the directory location that QVCS will use for the work files which you will place under version control. Click the [...] button to browse directories. For the purpose of this tutorial, find and select the same directory where you installed QVCS, then click the "Next" button.

  

• The "Define Archive files location" wizard page asks you to define the directory location that QVCS will use for storing the QVCS archive files for this project.
  
  If you expect there to be subdirectories that you'd like to include in the project, the directory you define here should be the "root" directory of a directory hierarchy that will contain the QVCS archives for the new project. This field is editable, or you can use the [...] button to browse for a directory. If the directory does not yet exist, QWin will create it when you click the "Next" button.
  
  For this tutorial, just enter: "C:\qvcs_archives\Test Project" as the directory name. This naming convention is a useful way to define the location of your QVCS archives. For subsequent projects, you could define the archive location for each new project as C:\qvcs_archives\<<Project Name>>.

  

• The "Define Reference files location" wizard page asks you to define a directory that will hold a reference copy of any work files associated with this project. Reference files are simply copies of the latest revision in each QVCS archive. If you leave the location blank, QVCS will not create a reference copy of the project's work files.
  
  For this tutorial step, just leave the reference location blank and click the "Next" button.

  

• The "Define project access list" wizard page asks you to define the access list that QVCS will associate with whatever QVCS archives you create for this project. Clicking the [...] button will bring up a "Maintain Access List" dialog, from which you can define a suitable access list. Be sure to include your name on the list. After you have defined the access list, click the "Next" button.

  

• The "Auto-Create Project Hierarchy" wizard page allows you to tell QWin whether or not you want it to automatically create archive files for the existing work files in the directory you defined. Enabling this option will cause QVCS to store the current work file information as the initial revision of each associated QVCS archive file.
  
  You can also choose to filter (by file extension) the files for which QWin will automatically create archives. You can choose either to "Include extensions" and create archives only for a defined set of file types, or to "Exclude extensions" and create archives for all but the specified file types. Any extensions you define should not include the "." character and should be separated by commas, no white space. These two check boxes are mutually exclusive; you can only use one or the other.
  
  For this tutorial, enable the "Automatically populate project hierarchy" check box. Then, in the "Filter File Types" area, enable the "Include extensions" check box, and enter "txt" into the associated edit field. This will cause QWin to create QVCS archives only for the .txt files in the given directory.

  

• Finally, click the "Finish" button to complete the creation of your project. In our "Test Project," QWin will now create QVCS archive files for license.txt, purchase.txt, readme.txt, tips.txt, and upgrade.txt. (Note that the "Finish" button is only enabled if you've supplied the project wizard with all the necessary information.)

After the completion of the project wizard, you'll notice that a "Test Project" node now appears beneath the "QVCS Projects" node and that it is selected, meaning that the files shown in the file list pane to the right are associated with the selected project node.

Congratulations! You've succeeded in creating your first QVCS project and QVCS archive files!

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