QVCS Product Family Newsletter - April 2007

Publication date: April 30, 2007

Newsletter Publishing Delay
QVCS-Enterprise Product Roadmap
New Features coming in QVCS-Enterprise 2.1
Forum topics
QVCS/QVCS-Pro Official Wish List

Newsletter Publishing Delay

This April 'monthly' newsletter is well over three months after the last 'monthly' newsletter published in January. I apologize for the delay and can only offer the excuse of being busy, with both QVCS-Enterprise related development work, and with a short term contracting assignment that is only now beginning to wind down.

QVCS-Enterprise Product Roadmap

In a recent blog entry:

http://www.qumasoft.com/weblog/archives/04-01-2007_04-30-2007.html#170

I speculated on the possible renaming of the QVCS-Enterprise product. This is something that I will likely do, but the timing is not certain yet. The basic goal is to segment the market a bit so there is a low cost entry point for the product, along with other more expensive products that provide more features. Since it would be cumbersome, and confusing to try to name these products using the QVCS-Enterprise moniker, I hit on the idea of renaming QVCS-Enterprise to QVCS-MP (for MultiPlatform). There would then be 3 products in the QVCS-MP product family: QVCS-MP, QVCS-MP-Pro, and QVCS-MP-Enterprise with 3 different price points. QVCS-MP would offer a feature set similar toQVCS; QVCS-MP-Pro would offer a feature set similar to QVCS-Pro -- i.e.it adds support for IDE integration; QVCS-MP-Enterprise would add support for views.

Comments or suggestions are welcome.

New Features coming in QVCS-Enterprise 2.1

For the 2.1 release, I've been keeping track of changes by both revisions within QVCS-Enterprise, and also by assigning a 'change set' id to each feature that I add to the product. A 'change set' is a term often used within the source control product community to describe the mathematical set of file changes (file revisions in QVCS lingo) that together constitute the implementation of some single feature, or the fixing of some single bug. To manage 'change sets', I just use the simple database tool included in the Open Office product (see http://www.openoffice.org). Each bug or feature gets assigned a change set id. I then use that id at the beginning of the checkin comment for a file that I change in order to implement the given feature, or fix the given bug.

To date, the changes in 2.1 include over 950 revisions of over 400 separate files -- all to implement under 10 new features. As I've noted before, these new features have required some heavy lifting -- the number of revisions needed to implement the 'view' concept (a single new feature) stands at 501 revisions of 291 files. Whew.

The 'big' new features in 2.1 include:

Improved authorization model
Rename a file
Move a file from one directory to another via drag-and-drop
View support so you can create a view of what the 'world' looked like at some time in the past, or create a view of the 'world' based on a label.

Features on the roadmap that haven't been implemented yet that may appear in 2.1 or later:

Rename a directory
Move a directory
Delete a directory

The 2.1 release includes the basic framework needed to treat directories as version controlled objects -- so beginning with the 2.1 release, QVCS-Enterprise will capture the directory meta-data needed to keep track of changes to the contents and location of a directory.

Whether the directory operation features noted above make it into the 2.1 release will depend on how much work they require, as well as feedback during the earlier portions of the beta period: is 2.1 a coherent release without these features, or are they needed in order for the release to make sense?

Forum topics

There is a forum topic that could use your input:

http://qumasoft.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3570#

The basic question: what tool(s) do you use for tracking bugs?

I have some interest in the responses as well: does it make sense for Quma to develop an affordable, easy to use bug tracking/feature tracking product, or is that market already adequately served?

If you are not yet a forum member, you'll need to join the forum in order to enter your comments. This is not as easy as I would like it to be -- the forum has been the target of spammers for some time now, and I have to be careful to restrict forum access so I can preventinappropriate material from appearing there. See this blog entry for a little more background:

http://www.qumasoft.com/weblog/archives/04-01-2007_04-30-2007.html#171

QVCS/QVCS-Pro Official Wish List

After completing work on QVCS-Enterprise 2.1, I'll swing back into C++ land and work on a refresh for QVCS/QVCS-Pro. The current 'official' wish list for that refresh includes the following changes (in no particular order):

Improve IDE behavior in circumstance where IDE setting is to checkout the latest files or checkout all the files when starting the IDE. See http://qumasoft.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2330&st=0#
Add 'Force Branch' to user preferences so user can set the default state of that checkbox for checkin operations.
Show checkout timestamp so user or admin can see how long a file has been checked out.
Disable the 'New Project' menu if menu is used from within an existing project.
Always enable the delete directory menu option. If chosen when it won't work, provide some guidance to user so they will know how to make it work.
On browse for directory dialog, make it so creating a new directory will fill the new directory name into the directory name edit box. Currently, the edit box remains populated with 'New Folder'.
Improved support for Vista.
On a get, have option to allow creation of workfile directories that correspond to the archive directory even if there are no archives in the archive directory.
Put up progress dialog for lengthy (project level) change access list operations.
Make access list case insensitive.

Want to see something else on the wish list? Let me know.