Happy New Year! "Free Beer!"

QVCS and QVCS-Pro are now free (as in 'free beer'). The web site now includes a generic license file (good for 100 concurrent users) for either product... See the download page to get your hands on one of the generic license files. Anyone can now use the latest release of QVCS or QVCS-Pro for free.

I also adjusted the price of QVCS-Enterprise -- it's now $39/user; down from the $69/user price of last year.

With my full-time job, I just haven't had the time that I would like to put in to product development -- so to be fair to customers, I decided to drop prices to better reflect my perception of the value add that I'm providing -- with QVCS and QVCS-Pro priced as 'loss-leaders' to help introduce folks to the QVCS product family.

Do these price changes mean that I'm giving up on product development? No... with the caveat that I have stopped active development on QVCS and QVCS-Pro. I remain comitted to all three products, but my current development efforts are exclusively focused on QVCS-Enterprise.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.20 Release now available

You can download the QVCS/QVCS-Pro from the usual location. 

This is release addresses 3 defects:

1. The Auto-add files project menu is now disabled if the 'QVCS Projects' root node is selected as it doesn't make sense to try to add files to the QVCS Projects root node, and using that menu option would lock up QWin.
2. There was a buffer overflow bug in the compression algorithm that is now fixed. This was one of those very hard to find defects that I only resolved as result of a user supplying a file that could reproducibly create the problem.
3. Fixed a defect with label/unlabel triggers.

This is a free update for 3.10.18 and 3.10.19 users.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.18 Release now available

I just posted the QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.18 release. Details are available here .

Refresh coming for QVCS/QVCS-Pro

I'm putting the finishing touches on a minor refresh for QVCS/QVCS-Pro. The scheduled release date is July 28.

This release will add a feature to the qmodhdr command line utility so you can add users to a file's access list, even in the case where you are not currently on that file's access list. This will make administering the access list a bit easier, as it can now be a real nuisance to add users to the access list of a large project when there is no single user who is guaranteed to be already on the access list of all the files in the project.

Another new feature will be support for a new kind of file filter -- 'Label contains string'. This file filter will allow you to define a string that must be contained within a label that has been applied to a file. It any of a file's labels contain the given string, it will pass the filter; if the file has no labels containing the filter's string, then the file will not pass the filter.

The third new feature an added file menu option that allows you to view the selected file as text, instead of viewing it using the default application associated with the file's file extension.

Coding is pretty much wrapped up, with just minor documentation changes yet to be made. If you have some other minor change that you'd like to see, please let me know.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.17 released

I just posted the 3.10.17 build. It fixes a minor problem in keyword expansion of the $Log$ keyword in the case where the revision comment is longer than the wordwrap column and there are no preceeding spaces in the comment. This is something that was partially fixed in 3.10.16, but I missed some boundary cases in that build that are now fixed in this latest effort.

Enjoy.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.16 Released

I just posted the 3.10.16 release. It's got the changes noted in the immediately preceeding blog entry. Enjoy. Please let me know if you run into any problems.

WIP -- Next QVCS/QVCS-Pro Release coming soon

I've been making progress on the next QVCS/QVCS-Pro release, and have tentatively scheduled its release for the end of this month.

So far, I've got the following changes coded and tested:

• QVCS/QVCS-Pro user names are now case insensitive.
• QVCS/QVCS-Pro now tracks the timestamp of a checkout or lock and displays that timestamp in a new column in QWin.
• You can now define what column QVCS/QVCS-Pro will use for wordwrap when formatting revision comments for keyword expansion and for display in the 'Revision Information' pane. This wordwrap value is used when the revision comment is created at checkin time, or when the revision comment is editted.
• Added a 'Force Branch' to user preferences so the user can define the default state of the 'Force Branch' checkbox for the checkin dialog.
• Disabled the 'New Project' menu option if the menu is used within an existing project. Disabled the 'New Project' menu option if the menu is used within an existing project.

There are a few other minor changes that will make it in as well... If you have an itch that needs to be scratched, please let me know soon.

Stricter QVCS forum access

If you want posting access the QVCS support forums (http://qumasoft.ipbhost.com/ ), you'll need to jump through more hoops than in the past (Users who are already forum members won't see any change). For reasons that defy my understanding, QVCS support forums have undergone a sustained spam attack from folks who either want to waste my time (which may be their intent), or have some wild misunderstanding of what kind of message traffic I will allow to appear on a Quma support forum.

If you want to become a forum member, please drop me an e-mail (jimv at qumasoft dot com) as forewarning so I can let your membership application go through. If you are a registered user of any QVCS product, you'll just need to provide your registration ID. If you are not a registered user (why not?), then I'll be happy to let you on the forum if you can persuade me that you are not a bleep bleep spammer.

QVCS-Enterprise 2.0.18, and new box shots

QVCS-Enterprise 2.0.18 is available. You can find more details here. It's been out for a while, but I've only now gotten around to annoucing here on the blog... sorry for the delay, but I've been preoccupied with work on QVCS-Enterprise 2.1, and a short-term consulting gig that I've taken on.

Along the way, to the 2.1 release, I want to dress up the web site a bit, and to that end, a first step is to create some cooler graphics that I can use to represent the 3 QVCS products. I've always liked web sites that show their software products in 'box shots', even though the product is sold electronically... so I began to play around with a tool that would help generate nicely shaded box-shot pictures for the QVCS product line.

In a web search, I found an affordable, and simple to use product called (appropriately enough) Box Shot 3D. The only problem with using this product is that you have to have some artistic talent to create the images that it uses for the front and side of the box.... so I asked my daughter to put together something, and was major league pleased with the results:

How cool is that?

Hopefully, customers will understand that they'll never actually receive a box containing software...

These new box shots will be part of the new look to the web site -- and though it will be a while before the web site update actually happens, I couldn't resist showing these off.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.15 build available

I just posted the QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.15 build. It is a bug fix build only. Details are available here. It is a free update to users whose license is less than one year old.

Visual Compare for .doc files and spreadsheets

QVCS can version control anything that's stored in a file -- including binary files. Performing a visual compare on binary files, however, is usually worthless unless you use a visual compare tool that is 'aware' of the file format for the given binary file type. For some of the popular binary file formats, these kinds of visual compare tools exist. For example, you can use a tool from Zizasoft to perform visual compares of Microsoft Word documents. Alternately, you could use a tool from Formula Software to compare different revisions of an Excel spreadsheet (See our resources page for some other alternatives).

Suppose you want to be able to use these tools, and still use a vanilla visual compare utility for the rest of your files? Can that be done? Yes... but you have to use a batch file so that different file extensions will launch different file compare utilities. For QVCS and QVCS-Pro, you need to create a batch file that looks something like this:


IF %~x1==.DOC goto docFiles
IF %~x1==.doc goto docFiles

IF %~x1==.XLS goto xlsFiles
IF %~x1==.xls goto xlsFiles

:otherFiles
"C:\qvcsbin\ExamDiff.exe" "%1" "%2"
goto end

:docFiles
cd "C:\Program Files\Zizasoft\zsComparePro"
zsComparePro.exe '/leftFile:%1' '/rightFile:%2' /fileOptions:"By Character" /noSplash
goto end

:xlsFiles
cd "C:\Program Files\Excel Compare"
xlsc.exe "%1" "%2" /allSheets
goto end

:end


In QWin3, you would then select the Admin/Preferences... menu, and on the Utilities tab, enter the path to the batch file so that it looks something like:


C:\qvcsbinTest\myCompare.bat "%s" "%s"


For QVCS-Enterprise, you can do something similar. You can use the same batch file described above. To get the QVCS-Enterprise client to use this instead of the built-in visual file compare, you need to start the client, select the Admin/User Preferences... menu option, and on the Utilities tab, enable the 'Use External Visual Compare Tool'. In the associated edit box, you need to enter a command line that looks like:


C:\qvcsbin\myCompare.bat file1Name file2Name


IDE Integration tip

I had a tech-support issue come up the other day related to getting IDE integration to work. In sorting through the issue, it turns out that neither QVCS-Pro nor QVCS-Enterprise is very friendly to the non-admin user.... i.e. they both need admin rights to make the necessary registry changes that are required by Microsoft's SCC IDE integration.

Since I'm an admin user on all my machines, it's not a problem I've ever run into. I guess it also goes without saying that neither am I a Windows admin guru. We came up with a successful workaround, and I'll be creating a FAQ on the solution as soon as I can put the pieces together into a coherent presentation.

In the meanwhile, if you are a non-admin user who has given up on getting IDE integration to work, the basic problem can be solved by changing the rights on two hives in the registry.

What you have to do is described nicely by this article (for a product completely unrelated to QVCS or QVCS-Enterprise). Instead of the BSI hive (described in the linked article), you would need to modify the SourceCodeControlProvider hive and the QumaSoftware hive in the same registry tree as described in the article.

Updates galore

This past week, I've posted updates for both QVCS-Enterprise (1.2.13) and QVCS/QVCS-Pro (3.10.12).

Both of these updates are bug fix releases.

In the case of QVCS-Enterprise, the new build fixes a problem that shows up when you have users who have different ways of capitalizing the name of the same file. For example, if user A has a file named foobar.java and user B has a file named FooBar.java, QVCS-Enterprise will normally see these as different files. If, however, you have enabled the 'ignore case' project level setting, QVCS-Enterprise is supposed to treat them as if they were the same file. The 1.2.13 release makes it so it finally does treat them as the same file.

So why does QVCS-Enterprise even allow foobar.java and FooBar.java to be considered as separate files. The simple answer is that in *NIX environments, the file system treats foobar.java to be different than FooBar.java. Since QVCS-Enterprise is cross-platform, it should support this scenario. Admittedly, this should be the rare case, but in software, it's often the boundary cases that drive both requirements and design choices.

In the upcoming 2.0 QVCS-Enterprise release, new projects will have the 'ignore case' setting enabled by default. Note that with the current 1.2.13 release, if you change the 'ignore case' project setting, you'll need to restart the server in order for the change to take effect.

The 3.10.12 release of QVCS/QVCS-Pro is strictly a bug fix release -- it fixes a problem with the 'login as' feature.

You can get the bits for the latest stuff from here. 

QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.10.11 Release Now Available

I posted the 3.10.11 release late yesterday. It's a bug fix release. You can download it from the usual location. 

The bug it addresses is a little obscure -- but if you meet the conditions of the bug, it can be a real nuisance. The bug will appear if you create a branched revision on a file and you change the default branch of that file to be something other than the TRUNK.

The symptoms of the bug: QWin will not start up -- it will exit at startup, complaining of an unknown exception in QWin4.cpp at line 614. You can sometimes workaround the bug by rebuilding the cache file -- i.e. manually delete the Q$QCache file located in the archive directory.

The bug was caused by some bad serialization code in reading and writing to the cache. That code only got used in the case where a file's default branch was set to something other than the TRUNK.

I wrote the original code a long time ago (back in 1999) based on some code that dates back to 1995. That original C++ code was based on some C code that dates back to the origins of QVCS on the Amiga (say back in 1991). Back then, the idioms I was using for structured file I/O were C style idioms. The bug came about because I began to change to C++ idioms for file I/O but neglected to change the code that still relied on C style idioms for some of the low level I/O.

I guess one lesson from this is that while C and C++ can co-exist, their respective coding idioms do not -- at least not without more care than is built into the respective languages.

Oops.

QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.10.10 Release Now Available

I just posted the 3.10.10 build.

This release is primarily a bug fix build, though it does have one minor new feature. Here's a list of fixes:

• I made some changes to the archive writing code so that it has a better chance of success when writing very large files to network shares. I've tested with files over 200 Megabyte in size, and things work as expected.
• File status is now refreshed automatically in the case where a user attempts to perform an operation that is not allowed. For example, suppose user A checks out a file, and then user B attempts to check out that same file. Ideally, before attempting the checkout, user B types F5 to refresh file status and the checkout attempt would have been prevented -- but in the common circumstance, that will not be the case, and user B's checkout request will fail. Before this fix, user B had to manually type the F5 key after the checkout failed in order to the file list panel would show that user A had checked out the file. After this fix, that refresh is done automatically.
• The status message area is now cleared after a 2 second delay.

The one new feature:

• You can now launch Windows Explorer from the file menu and the popup file menu. The copy of Explorer will open up to the directory containing the selected workfile, and that file will be selected. The menu option is only enabled if the workfile exists.

This is a free update for users who have purchased or renewed within the past year. Other users will have to update their license.

Keeping busy

Busy, busy, busy.

How many balls can you keep in the air at a time?

I'm writing this from my hotel room. I'm on a short term consulting gig for my former employer. I didn't burn any bridges there when I left to work on Quma full-time last year, and thought I could help them out. The consulting is interesting enough, but it's keeping me busy during the day -- so QVCS work slides back to the evenings where it lived for many, many years.

As a consequence of the consulting work, it looks like the release date for QVCS-Enterprise 2.0 will push off until late summer or early fall. As I've noted earlier, the big new feature in Enterprise 2.0 will be support for Microsoft's SCC IDE integration. I've made some good progress with it over the past several months, and have it far enough along that I can self-host its development: check-outs, check-ins, revision history, visual compare, and revision compare all work like they do in QVCS-Pro. I still have a few more functions to implement, and have to add PowerBuilder support (which should be pretty easy). I'm shooting to have an early beta ready in several weeks. This will be a beta without installer support -- you'll have to manually muck around in the registry to get things set up so an IDE will 'know' about QVCS-Enterprise, but ... the functionality is there, and I need to get some other folks working with it to identify areas that still need some polish, and to help find any bugs.

On the QVCS/QVCS-Pro front, I'll publish a bug-fix release at the end of this month. There are a few relatively minor bugs addressed in this next build. Chief among them is improved support for very large files. I had a user a while back who was having trouble getting QVCS to work with very large files (>50 Megabytes)... things would work fine if everything was done on one machine, but as soon as he tried to get things to work with a file server over the LAN, things would fall apart. More recently, another user has run into this same behavior, and this time, I've been able to duplicate the problem.... and fix it. The code change breaks up the writes into smaller chunks instead of attempting to write the entire gazillion bytes in a single write. I would have thought that the underlying runtime libraries would have handling this kind of chunking, but apparently not.

QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.10.8 available

Over the weekend, I posted the 3.10.8 release. This is a bug-fix release only that addresses two problems:

• The rename bug noted earlier
• A problem with the qstamp command line utility: the -duplabel feature did not work correctly.

The duplicate label feature did work okay in the GUI -- it was only broken in the qstamp command line utility.

You can download the bits from the usual location.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro Rename bug

Several users have reported a problem where navigation updates to the Revision Info pane (and the File Info, and Revision Detail pane also) stop. I had never been able to duplicate the bug, so it didn't get fixed. Well, now a user (thanks Phil K.!) has tracked the problem down to rename attempts. As it turns out, any kind of rename will cause the update lockup. The simplest workaround is to exit QWin and restart. The rename function works as expected, it just has the unintended side effect of locking out updates to the detail panes at the bottom right of the screen. Oops. I've already fixed the code, and will publish a 3.10.8 release at the end of the month.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.7 Release Now Available

I just posted the QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.10.7 release. The bits are the same as the candidate build I posted earlier this week. You can download the latest release here. 

Early bird special; MFC CSocket advice

I just uploaded the likely bits for the upcoming 3.10.7 release. The official release date is this Friday; but you can get the bits early here. I say likely, because I don't expect to make any additional changes to the code between now and Friday -- unless there are some late bug reports.

Things have been quiet on the blog because I've been preoccupied -- coding away on both the 3.10.7 release and the 2.0.x Enterprise release. As noted above, the bits for 3.10.7 are now stable. 2.0.x Enterprise is a completely different story.

The big feature for 2.0.x Enterprise is be the addition of support for Microsoft SCC IDE integration (like QVCS-Pro). To implement this, I've been writing the IDE client piece in C++, and making the corresponding transport changes in Java for the server code. Along the way, I implemented socket code on the client to communicate with the server, just like the existing Java client. One of the twists that requires server changes is that I can't use Java Serialization on the C++ side for object serialization, since I don't have a JVM on the client. This means writing a serialization layer on both server and client to push the bits back and forth. The result is a better use of bandwidth, at the expense of writing and maintaining the serialization code.

Since QVCS and QVCS-Pro are MFC based C++ applications, I figured I'd write the client SCC .dll as an MFC based .dll Since I had to do socket communications between the MFC C++ client and the Java server, I figured I'd use an MFC supplied socket class. As it turns out, that was a mistake that cost me several days of frustration: I tried to use the MFC CSocket class, since it seemed to be a closer fit to what I needed. For whatever reason -- it was not a good use of my time to try to debug what was going on -- the CSocket class really did not fit the threading model that I needed to support. There must be some scenarios where CSocket can work, but it was not reliable at all in the way that I was trying to use it. The Microsoft docs were not helpful in pointing out the limitations of the CSocket class -- for that I had to rely on dribs and drabs of complaints that I found via Google search.

In the end, I punted, and wrote my own socket class that wraps the Windows socket API's, based on some sample code I found on the Internet. It works well, and is actually very simple. My guess is that almost everyone else who has to write socket code in an MFC environment goes through a similar two days of agony, and then does the same thing that I did. The result is more reliable with well defined behavior than the MFC supplied alternatives.

The bottom line advice -- if you are thinking of using the MFC CSocket class for anything useful, think again.

3.10.7 Build at end of March

I'll release a 3.10.7 build at the end of March. This is a bug fix release/minor change release. So far, it addresses a couple of issues:

1. The blinking of the toolbar filter indicator will become a user preference... meaning you can turn the blinking off if you like. The default will be for the blinking to be turned off. You set your preference via the Admin/Preferences... dialog.
2. Fix a bug in the get dialog so that the presence of the overwrite dialog won't hold the lock on the associated archive file.
3. Fix bug in Login As... implementation so that it works correctly. I broke this in the 3.9.25 build.
4. A small usability improvement: the checkin dialog becomes resizable.

The changes above have already been coded and tested. I'm just holding off on the release pending any other bug reports.

UPDATE: Added mention of the Login As... bug fix.

QVCS-Pro and QVCS 3.10.6 Now Available

I just the 3.10.6 release.

As I've noted before, the main point of this release is to add support for .dll based triggers. Testing has confirmed that performance is pretty good... generally much better performance than you get using .exe based triggers.

There are a few other goodies in there. The one I like the most is the change to the way checkout comments are handled. In previous releases, you could enter a comment at checkout time, and that comment would become the default comment at checkin time. The problem with the old implementation is that no one could see what your checkout comment was. It was a secret. The new implementation makes your checkout comment visible to everyone. This makes it much easier to include some note in your checkout comment that others will find useful -- like explaining why you have checked out a given revision.

The other big 'under-the-hood' change in this release is a change to the way cache locking works. The new locking scheme is compatible with the 3.9 cache locking scheme, but adds the ability to determine whether a cache lock is a read-only lock or not. The great thing about read-only cache locks is that there can be multiple lockers -- which means there can be many concurrent 'readers' of the cache. This should greatly reduce the number of cache collisions for larger teams. This doesn't make cache collisions go away -- it just makes them less likely.

You can get the bits from the usual locations: here or here. 

Final 3.10 Candidate available

I just uploaded the latest (final) candidate build for the upcoming 3.10 release. You can get it here .

The docs are pretty much complete, and it is code complete as well. If anything changes between now and February 28, it will just be to fix any last minute bugs.

The big change in this build is support for read-only access to the cache file. This makes cache collisions much less likely, since most access to the cache is read-only access. This build also has some performance tweeks that make it faster than earlier builds.

QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.10 in progress

When I'm busy coding, I spend less time updating the blog.... that combined with shaking off a cold made entries here that much less frequent.

In any case, the release for the end of February is taking shape. It's got two major 'features':

1. Support for .dll based triggers
2. Improved support for checkout comments.

The .dll based trigger support allows the QVCS-Pro user to code up their trigger code in a .dll instead of having the trigger code run in a separate executable. This makes the trigger faster, since the call to the trigger code is just a function call instead of launching a separate executable. In addition, the parameters passed to the .dll based trigger are a little more complete than the parameters passed to a trigger executable. I've got a sample trigger .dll project included in the distribution, along with the built version of that trigger .dll so you can try it out. I also moved the sample trigger executable code and project into a .zip file included in the distribution so it's easier to build your own, using the boilerplate code I provide.

The improved support for checkout comments makes it so checkout comments are visible to other users via an entry in the Revision Info panel (and the Revision Detail panel). This should make checkout comments more useful.

I checked with my marketing department (looking in the mirror), and we decided that this end-of-February release should begin the 3.10 series of releases. The decision is a bit arbitrary, but a lot of marketing is that way.

In any case, you can preview the bits by downloading the latest candidate build.

QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.9.25 release available

I just posted the 3.9.25 release. You can download the bits here. 

This release really should be called 3.10 instead of 3.9.25. I'll have to take that up with the marketing deparment. Details on what's in the release can be found here. 

The biggest deal for this release has to be its support for Visual Studio 2005. Earlier releases may work with VS 2005, but this is the first release that's been validated to work with it -- i.e. I have tested 3.9.25 with the retail release of VS 2005 and it works as expected. 3.9.25 has a number of other usability tweaks that should make things easier to use, etc. Comments are welcome.

3.9.25 is a free update for anyone whose license is less than 1 year old.

QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.9.25.7 candidate release

I just posted the 3.9.25.7 candidate build. You can download it here. 

A I noted yesterday, this is now code complete for the 3.9.25 build that will be published on Jan. 31.

This build has been tested with Visual Studio 2005, and works as expected. I'll be updating the web site FAQ page with some tips on how to get things to work with VS 2005. The most important thing to get right is to make sure the your project is first visible to QWin as being under version control, just like with VS 2003, and other IDE's.

The other important thing for VS 2005 is that QVCS must be installed on a local drive -- VS 2005 requires it. The FAQ will include some guidance on how to install QVCS locally, and still use a network share for your qwin.ini (project definitions), user .ini files, and your QVCS.License file.

More tweaks for upcoming 3.9.25 release

I'm putting the finishing touches on the upcoming 3.9.25 release -- and recovering from a cold. (I guess one of the problems of working at home is that taking a sick day has a different meaning than when you drive to the office.... so I had the laptop upstairs instead of working in the colder basement.).

Today, I added some final tweaks: support for the Windows Application key. That's the key that is meant to mimic the behavior you get when you right click the mouse. I might have time to put in another thing or two, but I'm otherwise ready to declare this baby code complete. I'll update the candidate build sometime tomorrow so you can get a preview if you'd like.

In the next QVCS and QVCS-Pro release

I've been busy with the next QVCS and QVCS-Pro release. I'm shooting for a release by month end.

This release again has a usability focus:

• The mouse scroll wheel now finally works for the Revision Information pane and the File Information pane.
• The workfile location is now always displayed above the file list instead of showing up on the status bar at the time of directory navigation.
• I've discarded the greyed background when filters are active, and replaced it with a slowly blinking indicator on the toolbar.
• There is a new 'Revision Detail' pane that supports 'copy to clipboard' operations like a standard edit box.

Under the hood, there are several changes:

• The ini file code has been reworked so that it is less disk intensive. This helps improve startup and shutdown times slightly.
• The startup code has been changed so that you can install QVCS locally, but still have it 'point' to copies of your license file, and qwin.ini, etc. that are located on a shared directory. This change is required for Visual Studio 2005 support (still in testing). In addition, a number of users have requested this functionality to help decrease network traffic.

You can get an early taste of these changes by downloading my 'work in progress' builds here. These 'candidate' builds don't have their docs updated yet, but I am using them internally. If you want to try -- make sure to backup your existing installation first. To install, just unzip the candidate over your existing installation directory, or unzip into an empty directory, and copy your existing .ini files and license file into the new directory. If you want to try out the 'local install/remote qwin.ini' behavior, send me e-mail for some instructions on how to get that to work.

Updates for New Years

I just uploaded updates for both QVCS/QVCS-Pro and QVCS-Enterprise.

For QVCS and QVCS-Pro, you can read the details here. 

For QVCS-Enterprise, you can read the details here. 

Happy New Year!

Holiday Distractions

The holidays generate many distractions. The distractions are the kind that make the holidays a happy time:

• picked my daughter up from college...
• went to visit my son and his fiance -- he's on his own, and has been now for close to 2 years.
• shopping
• "must see" movies (Pride and Prejudice)
• peppermint ice cream...

Between the distractions, I've been working on cleaning up some bugs in QVCS 3.9.23, and some bugs in Enterprise 1.2.10. Both will get refresh/bug fix releases near year end.

The 3.9.23 bugs are subtle, and not urgent (which is why they haven't been fixed already). One area of cleanup surrounds the correct treatment of obsolete files. In QVCS, an obsolete file is one that cannot be changed (it's obsolete), but is available for 'get by label' operations for those cases where you need to get an old revision for building an old release (for example). The goal of the changes is to make the handling of obsolete files more transparent than is currently the case. Along the way, I've had to cleanup some subtle problems with the file rename operation. The last of those changes went in today. Thanks to David A. for reporting a weird boundary case that turned out to be related to the rename operation.

This next QVCS/QVCS-Pro build will also add support for two new keywords suggested in this forum topic. 

The Enterprise changes are also minor: In some rare cases, the server shutdown doesn't happen in a clean way leading to corruption of the role store and/or the authentication store. The symptoms are the sudden disappearance of projects and/or the sudden disappearance of users. The bug is very difficult to reproduce, but the changes for the next build should address the issue. The next build will also include support for the same 2 new keywords mentioned above for QVCS/QVCS-Pro.

Release mania

Eric Sink (a founder at competitor SourceGear) has an interesting post about a recent flurry of product releases that they went through for their Vault product. He supplies a lot of background. Kudos to him for providing a story that almost any software firm can relate to. Here, at Quma Software, I went through a similar recent spate of releases, and while the nuts and bolts of the details are different, the general theme of the story is the same. To quote:

The six billion people of the world can be divided into two groups:

1. People who know why every good software company ships products with known bugs.
2. People who don't.

Those of us in group 1 tend to forget what life was like before our youthful optimism was spoiled by reality. Sometimes we encounter a person in group 2, perhaps a new hire on the team or even a customer. They are shocked that any software company would ever ship a product before every last bug is fixed.

Here in the real world, products have bugs, and we fix them as we can, based on their severity, how easy they are to fix without breaking something else, and other factors. The goal is always to create a product that is better for our customers.

One factor that I don't remember Eric discussing (he may have -- it's a long article), is the degree to which customers are exhausted by release churn. I know that as a customer of other tool vendors, I don't like the time it takes to install a new release, and I especially don't like release churn.

In QVCS land, updates are easy enough to perform, but I'm sure that there are users who forego performing an update because they perceive it to be a nuisance.... and frankly, if you have more than one release a week, it is a nuisance. But better to get a fix out to the user community immediately, even if it's embarrassing, than to pretend that the software has no bugs.

UPDATE: Added a style wrapper around Eric's quote to make the quote boundaries more readable.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.9.23 Release

The latest QVCS/QVCS-Pro release is now at 3.9.23... If you blinked, you may have missed the 3.9.22 release.

I created the 3.9.23 build to change one line of code so that the product would work for a user running a Novell 6 file server. The change had no effect on Windows file servers. Hopefully, this will be the last build for a while -- though if you have a problem, please report it. As you can see from the release history, simple defects get fixed pretty fast.

From the development standpoint, the variety of behaviors supplied by the different file servers is a nuisance. You'd think there would be some specification that they must all adhere to. Even if there is a spec, they do not supply the same behavior. I've seen different behavior for SAMBA file servers than Windows servers, and different behavior for Novell servers than for Windows servers. And of course, Novell 4 behaves differently than Novell 6. (The latest QVCS release works on Novell 6, but does not work on Novell 4).

QVCS/QVCS-Pro and Windows 98/Me

Beginning with the 3.8 release, QVCS/QVCS-Pro no longer worked on Windows 98 or Windows Me. I never took the time to understand why. As it turns out, the reasons are simple, and a naive trust in Microsoft is partly to blame.

Beginning with the 3.8 release, I began to use the Windows API function called InitializeCriticalSectionAndSpinCount(). Its purpose is to initialize a critical section blob that can later be used as a semaphore to serialize access to a shared resource. It turns out that Microsoft changed the signature (read behavior) of this function between the Windows 98/Me platforms and the later releases of Windows (e.g. XP and W2K).

For XP and W2K, this function returns a nonzero value on success, and a value of zero on failure. However in Windows 98 and Me, the function does not return a value at all, but throws an exception on failure. As a consequence, if you write code that actually checks whether the function call succeeds, you cannot use the same code on XP and W2K as you use when running on 98 or Me. This was the fundamental issue that caused QVCS to fail to start on 98 and Me platforms.

I suppose shame on me for not reading the function documentation more carefully, and for ignoring the 98 and Me user. I'll offer the excuse however that it has been Microsoft's practice in the past to rename functions that actually change behavior -- maybe to InitializeCriticalSectionAndSpinCountEx(). Would it have been too much to expect that they change the name of the function to reflect that difference in behavior?

In any case, the 3.9.22 build has wrapper code around the use of that function call so that it behaves as needed, depending upon whether the code is running on 98/Me or whether it's running on XP/W2K, etc.

Bottom line: if you are still using Windows 98 or Windows Me, you'll need the 3.9.22 build in order to get things to work.

How big is your... QVCS Project

I've put a poll up on the forum site here. Please take a look, and vote. I'd like to get a read of the typical QVCS project size.

The poll is prompted by a support thread  on the forum where the user is wondering why QWin takes so long to start. I'm not confident that we've gotten to the bottom of what's going on, but along the way, I learned that the user had close to 10,000 files in the project, and that one directory had over 4,000 files.

QVCS can handle projects that large, but startup will be slow, especially if the cache files haven't been built yet. Also, there's added work in computing the digest values for the workfiles. This all adds up to a slow startup time for a large project. Once the cache files have been built (a one time thing), and the digest values have been computed (a one time thing), then subsequent startups should be faster -- provided things haven't changed since the last startup. By that I mean, that if QWin detects that a workfile has changed since its digest was last computed, it will re-compute the digest for that workfile.

In any case, please take the poll.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.9.21 Release Now Available

I just posted the 3.9.21 build. It is mostly a bug-fix release, as you'll note if you look at these notes.

Thanks to Dirk for helping narrow down one of the bugs. Almost all of the bug fixes in this build are to fix user reported bugs. As I've noted before, I can't fix a bug unless I know about it.

QVCS 3.9 Now Available

I just posted the 3.9 release. You can download it here. It's identical to the release candidate beta (3.9.18).

I've spent the past several days getting the web site updated for the release, as well as updating the user manual so it's up to date as well.

Let me know if you run into any issues.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.9.18 beta now available

I posted the 3.8.18 build earlier today. It's a possible release candidate -- meaning if no bugs turn up in the next week or so, I'll 'promote' it to the actual 'official' 3.9 release.

The only known problem that I'm not going to fix is a problem I ran across when testing the SCC integration with Whidbey Beta 2. Turns out Microsoft is actually getting serious about security, which is a good thing. In Whidbey (aka Visual Studio 2005), they don't allow an SCC provider's DLL to be located anywhere except on the local machine -- at least that's the conclusion I reached as a result of a semi-confusing error message and further testing.

IDE integration with Whidbey works okay, it's just not going to be useful in a team environment, since Whidbey requires that you use a local install of QVCS-Pro. The local install means that QVCS-Pro will put the cache lock files on your local disk also -- not very useful in a team environment. The fix is easy enough, and I'll get to it by November, which is the official launch date for Whidbey. On the QVCS-Pro side of the fix, it will mean adding a layer that allows the program to use the .ini files that are located in a different directory than the executables (this is a change that some users have asked for in the past). The change is not particularly difficult, but it does require more testing than I've got time for right now. I don't want to hold up the release of 3.9 just for this problem.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8.23 build now available

I just posted the 3.8.23 build of QVCS/QVCS-Pro. This is a bug-fix release only, as it cleans up a few bugs present in earlier 3.8 releases. See this list for more details of the fixes.

Probably, the most important fix in the 3.8.23 build is one for a bug that has been around for a long time: occasionally QVCS would wipe user .ini and the qwin.ini files, making it so you had to redifine all your users and projects. The workaround had been to make backup copies of the .ini files (which is still a good idea!), or to use Windows to change the permissions on those files so that no one could write to them. 3.8.23 fixes this.

For these kinds of bugs, it really helps to first report it, and second, to reproduce it. Often, I'll try to reproduce a bug here, and fail because I don't use the product in the way that's required to expose the problem. I've had a few reports of the .ini file problem for the past several years, but was only able to fix it easily as a result of a user who took the time to provide a very specific test case that would cause the problem to happen every single time.

If you have a bug, please take the time to let me know about it. If I don't know about the problem, it won't get fixed.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.9 Public beta now available

I just opened up the beta for the upcoming 3.9 release. The goal now is to flush out any remaining bugs before releasing the product into general use. This latest build slays the two remaining bugs that I wanted to get rid of before opening up the beta: the CTRL-DEL was not producing the correct Workfile status after the deletion of the archive file, and the 'Compare' button on the overwrite dialog was not working at all. This build also fixes the long-standing problem with .ini files getting wiped.

The only other remaining bug (that I know of) that I'll fix before the general release is to fix the Workfile status value for the case where you delete the tip revision from an archive file.

Open QVCS/QVCS 3.9 beta starting next week.

I'm getting closer to the public beta for the upcoming 3.9 release -- it will likely begin late today, or early next week. The docs still need a little more work, but code is complete and I've just been knocking out bugs this past week. One I was happy to finally fix was where the QVCS .ini files would get wiped out occasionally. This is a long standing, rarely reported problem.... Now fixed. I'll probably back-port the fix to some of the earlier releases -- for sure for 3.8.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.9 beta under way

We're into week 2 of the closed beta for the upcoming 3.9 release. I'll probably open the beta toward the end of August. I'm actually pretty happy with the code at this point, but the docs still need to be updated for the changes in 3.9. If you'd like an early peak at 3.9, and don't mind the lack of documentation, let me know. Meanwhile, I'll be working on the docs, and fixing any bugs we find along the way. This is my round-about way of saying that 3.9 is now feature complete... that 5 pound bag is full of 10 pounds of stuff... it won't hold any more.

And just to reiterate the obvious, you can buy now and 3.9 will be a free update for you.

QVCS product family newsletter

One of the recurring suggestions from the SIC conference: create and publish a newsletter to help keep your user community informed. This 'communicate with your users/customers' is an area where I need to improve -- so I decided to take the SIC lesson to heart, and begin the process of creating a monthly newsletter.

It will be available to anyone who wants to subscribe.... (see the Quma home page (top right of the page) for the link to add yourself to the mailing list). It's a double opt-in list, meaning that you have to send a confirming e-mail to actually get added to the list. All the standard privacy stuff applies -- I won't share your e-mail address with anyone else, etc., etc.. The plan is to publish once a month, probably around mid-month. The newsletter will be brief, and contain tips and tricks, product update information, and pointers to forum and blog topics that may be of interest to the QVCS user community.

For tools, I'm using Mail List King Professional. I've only had it for a day, but it seems pretty easy to use, and will make maintaining the newsletter mailing list pretty painless. It's got its own embedded SMTP server, so outbound traffic doesn't even hit my ISP, which is good. ISP's are pretty gun-shy about anything that looks like spam, and sending out a newsletter could look like spam to some folks.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8.20 available

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8.20 is now available. This fixes a few bugs present in earlier 3.8 releases, and is a free update for any registered 3.8 user.

Coming in QVCS 3.9

The ink is barely dry (so to speak) on the 3.8 release, and Jim's already talking about what's going to be in the 3.9 release.... Can't you just leave well enough alone? Well.... no. QVCS is a journey, not a destination.

The 3.8 release included a lot of internal changes, but was kind of light on the changes visible to the user. The 3.9 release is different -- it has the external changes that the 3.8 internal changes made possible. The most obvious will be (finally) support for displaying recursed directories: just click on a toolbar button, and you'll see all the files in the current directory, as well as any files in any child directories. This makes it very easy to see all the files that are out-of-date for the entire project. You can get a preview of the way it will work by taking QVCS-Enterprise for a test drive since this same feature has been in QVCS-Enterprise from the beginning. The 3.8 changes laid the foundations so that I could actually make this work for the 3.9 release.

To get these changes in to the upcoming 3.9 release, so far I've made 364 changes to 195 files. By way of comparison, the 3.8 release included over 1000 changes to over 300 files. While I'm hoping you're impressed with the amount of effort going into these releases, what I'm really fishing for here is some guidance on what else should go into 3.9? Shoot me some e-mail, post on the forums, or add a comment here. A squeeky wheel may get the grease.

And just to be clear, if you buy now, the 3.9 release will be a free update.

QVCS-Enteprise 1.1.11 now available, 3.7.17 update too

I just posted the 1.1.11 release of QVCS-Enterprise. This is strictly a bug fix release -- it has only one change: it fixes a problem with server shutdown in the case where the server is running as a Windows service.

I also posted a 3.7.17 release which is a bug fix release for 3.7 users. The fixes are those that I discovered as part of the work for the 3.8 release. If the fix was easy to get into the 3.7 code base, then I bundled it into the 3.7.17 build. There's nothing fancy here, but it does provide improved behavior for the named file filter combo box, and a few other changes. Details are listed on the What's New page -- just scroll down to find the 3.7.17 release.

The 3.7.17 release is a free update to registered 3.7 users. To install it, just unzip the distribution file over top of your existing 3.7 release.

3.8 users will not want to do anything with 3.7.17, since all the changes in 3.7.17 are also present in the 3.8 code base. 3.7.17 is meant strictly as a maintenance release for 3.7 users.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8.19 now available

I just posted the 3.8.19 build. It fixes the two problems mentioned here

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8.18 Bugs

When I publish a new release, there are usually some bugs that survive testing. So far, 2 bugs have surfaced in 3.8.18.

The first apparently occurs if you are using a SAMBA file server for your archive files. If the QVCS archive file has the 'Protect Logfile' QVCS attribute enabled, then checkins fail. The workaround is to disable the 'Protect QVCS archive' QVCS attribute.

The second bug occurs when you use the $Log$ or $LogX$ keyword, and you have a branch off of revision 1.0. The workaround is to disable keyword expansion, or to forego the use of the $Log$ or $LogX$ keywords.

I have fixes for both of these, and will publish a 3.8.19 release as soon as I get confirmation from the users who have reported the bugs that the changes in 3.8.19 actually work.

Many thanks to the users who took the time to report these problems. They are not bugs that I would have found otherwise.

New QVCS releases now available

I posted the latest releases for QVCS/QVCS-Pro (3.8.18) and QVCS-Enterprise (1.1.10).

Both of these releases are pretty significant. Feedback is welcome.

Wrapping up a double header

I've wrapped up coding on both QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8 and QVCS-Enterprise 1.1. Current plans are to release them both on May 31.

The QVCS-Enterprise release will be a free upgrade for existing QVCS-Enterprise users. It includes some features I've mentioned before as well as some other usability improvements that I had time to squeeze in:

• Screen sizes and splitter bar positions are now preserved.
• You can enter a comment at checkout time, and that comment will be the default comment used at checkin.
• If you have defined a viewer application for .html files, the generation of a report will automatically launch your .html viewer (presumeably a browser) for the report.

I'm now in the process of updating the web site, doing some final testing, and waiting for any final bug reports from the QVCS/QVCS-Pro beta users.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8 beta now open

I've opened up the 3.8 beta for general use. You can download the latest beta here. 3.8 is code and feature complete. I'm only fixing bugs (what bugs?) between now and release.

Make sure to check out the beta forum for comments and to make comments or report bugs.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8 beta is under way

I posted the first beta build (3.8.14) last Friday. We've already found and fixed a couple of bugs that I should have caught before... but that's one reason for the beta -- other folks have different ways they use the product that expose bugs that my testing just doesn't catch.

The goal is to create a release before the end of the month, but the actual release date will depend on the stability of the beta. Things look pretty good to me, but we'll have to wait and see what more bugs are exposed in the beta.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8 Beta

The QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.8 beta starts next week. To begin, this will be a closed beta -- meaning that the number of participants will be limited. If you are interested in helping out, please let me know -- I can use a few more participants.

The areas that I'm most interested in having others look at are the use of the new qrecurse command line tool, and QVCS-Pro IDE integration. I've added some features to the IDE integration (you can now check-out or get a revision other than the tip revision, you can unlock that non-tip revision, and you can apply a label at checkin time). I've tested these features here on Visual Studio 6.0 and VS.Net 2003, and they work as expected. I don't have PowerBuilder, or any other IDEs so I can't confirm that the changes work well in those environments.

The colors are gone

In QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.7 and earlier releases use colors of file icons to help show what differences might exist between the user's current workfile and the latest revision that's been checked in to the archive associated with that workfile. I'm happy to report that this confusing way of showing file status will be gone in the next (3.8) release. It will be replaced by a separate (sortable) column appropriately named the 'File status' column.

The new status column can have several values:

• Current - This means that your workfile matches the latest default revision for that file.
• Stale - This means that your workfile is out of date; there is a revision that is newer than the one that you currently have.
• Your copy changed - This means that you have made local edits to the workfile.
• Merge required - This means that you have made local edits to the workfile and there is a new revision. You may have to merge your edits with the latest changes.
• Different - This means your workfile is different than the latest revision, but QVCS can't figure out what the source of the difference is.
• Missing - This means that the workfile is missing.
• Not controlled - This means that the file is not version controlled.

The 'Merge required' value is still experimental, and may not survive the beta. If it is confusing, then I'll change it to show 'Different' instead.

In any case, these status values are huge improvement over the various colors that QVCS used in earlier releases, and the way that the status is calculated is actually very accurate, and does not rely much on file timestamps. As 3.8 gets closer to release, I'll post some screen shots so you can see how things have changed.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro Refactoring Update

The QVCS/QVCS-Pro refactoring blitz is beginning to wind down. It still have a few items to get to, but I've now switched over to the refactored code myself, and all is working as expected.

As I've noted here and on the forums, I'll definitely be doing a beta for this release. The likely window for the beta is the month of May.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro Refactoring II

Whew. Posting here has been light while I've been doing the deep dive on refactoring the checkin code. The first pass is now complete, and the QVCS/QVCS-Pro code (not released yet!!) can now apply a label at checkin time without necessarily creating a new revision. I still have to cross some t's and dot some i's to finish things up, but I'm pretty happy with the result. The code is much more maintainable as it finally has transitioned completely to object oriented C++ from the old old C code that has its origins from way back in the early days of QVCS on the Amiga.

Because of the large number of changes, I'll need to put this next release through a beta cycle. Anyone interested in helping out, please send me e-mail (jimv at qumasoft dot com). I'll probably set up a separate forum area to support the beta.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro Refactoring

There has been a 'feature' in QVCS/QVCS-Pro for a while now: if you apply a label at checkin time, then QVCS will always make a new revision for you, whether the file you are checking in is actually different from the revision that was checked out, or not. This is clearly not the correct behavior. The correct behavior for an unchanged file would be to simply apply the label to the revision that had been locked, unlock that revision, and not create a new revision. (The QVCS/QVCS-Pro workaround is to not apply the label until after the checkin, which can be a nuisance).

Well, in the upcoming 1.1 release of QVCS-Enterprise, I've added the ability to apply a label at checkin time, and in QVCS-Enterprise, it works as it should.

If QVCS-Enterprise can do it, then QVCS/QVCS-Pro should do it to! The reason I delayed implementing the same behavior in QVCS/QVCS-Pro is that.... you know how sometimes when you write code, and then add more and more features to it, it becomes.... complex? Well, that portion of QVCS/QVCS-Pro is pretty complex. I've stayed away from changing it for fear of breaking it. Fear no more. I've decided to refactor that whole section of code so that it is much more closely aligned with the Java implementation in Enterprise. The Enterprise code is actually pretty clean in this area, and the goal is to get the C++ code up to that same level of cleanliness. Along the way, there is a whole lot of refactoring going on. When complete, I'll have a body of code that is much easier to maintain, and will also (finally) do the right thing when applying labels at checkin time.

Defining features for the next QVCS/QVCS-Pro release

I bounce back and forth now between Java and C++ depending on the needs of the moment. For the past several days, I've been working on the next QVCS/QVCS-Pro release. This while I've also got the next QVCS-Enterprise release as a work-in-progress.

So far, the biggest item for the next QVCS/QVCS-Pro release will be recursion support for the command line utilities. This I've already completed. It works pretty well, and is very simple conceptually -- you just put 'qrecurse -worktree' in front of the QVCS command that you want to recurse. Alternately, you can use 'qrecurse -archivetree'. The former uses the existing workfile directory tree to 'drive' the recursion; the latter uses the existing archive directory tree to 'drive' the recursion. This is a feature I should have done years ago. Oh well. Sometimes the clarity of the requirements take a while to gell.

Other items on the release wish list (in no particular order) include: (1) The ability to check out and/or get revisions other than the tip revision when working within an IDE. (2) Allow entry of a check-in comment at check-out time. (3) Group named file filters by project name like in QVCS-Enterprise.

There's a whole lot of other potential features to work on. Those named here are the ones highest on the list.

For evening distraction, I've been slowly making my way through the final book of Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. The books are not ones to speed through, but I've found them to be well worth the effort, and certainly more worthy of my time than any distractions provided by television.

Longhorn and Detroit I

What a beautiful day -- at least for mid-February. Temperatures here (the Baltimore area) today are in the upper-50's (Fahrenheit). I just got back from taking a walk around the neighborhood. The snow is almost all gone. Spring is just around the corner.

I did get around to posting the 3.7.15 release this past weekend. It's primarily a maintenance release. Take a look at the new large toolbar buttons. My local graphics consultant (my daughter) fixed them so they are nice and sharp, instead of the blurry mess that they were.

After reading about the direction Microsoft is taking with Whidbey C++, I ran across another series of articles on Microsoft's Longhorn in MSDN Magazine. I guess I'm not drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid anymore. I don't understand the motivation for Longhorn. It seems to lack a specific focus. What's the 'big idea' to wrap around Longhorn? Why would I rewrite my applications to take advantage of the Longhorn platform? I don't know, and it appears that Microsoft doesn't know either, or at least they haven't hit their stride with the message yet.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.7.15 Coming Soon

I'm putting the finishing touches on a minor release for QVCS/QVCS-Pro. The release will address these issues:

• Added support for 'Out-of-date' status to the SCC/IDE .dll. This means that IDE's that provide some indication that a file is 'stale' will now be able to show if a file is 'out-of-date' -- which means that someone has checked in a revision that is newer than the workfile that is being used within the IDE.
• There is now a 'Compare' button on the dialog that appears when QWin has discovered that you are attempting to overwrite an existing workfile that is already not write protected. This will make it easy for you to make sure that you're not overwriting something important.
• Fixed the large button toolbar to be less blurry.
• Fixed the large button toolbar so that it does not hide the named file filter combo box.
• Prevent rename requests from succeeding unless the user is on the access list for the given file.
• The toolbar compare will now compare the workfile located in the checkout location instead of the default workfile location.
• Checkin timestamps are now no longer necessarily evenly divisible by 2.

The current plan is for this 3.7.15 release to appear before the end of February.

Comments are enabled.

I'm using haloscan to enable comments on this blog. Haloscan (so far) is pretty cool. You can check them out at Haloscan.

How to apply a label to a set of files.

When you are working in product development, you often need to apply a label to the files that compose that product. Sounds simple... you just select the files, and apply the label.

But what if there are some files present in the project -- files that you have under version control -- that are not really meant to be part of the product's set of files? How do you set things up so that you don't have to always keep track of what belongs in the project vs. what does not belong... i.e. how do you keep track of what should get labeled vs. what should not get labeled?

Some of the specifics are different between QVCS/QVCS-Pro and QVCS-Enterprise, but for all three products, the best first step to take is to apply a floating label to those files that are meant to be part of the product release.

Applying a floating label is a straight forward task -- just select the file (or files), click the label button on the toolbar, enter a label string, and make sure to enable the 'Make this a floating label' check box. With QVCS and QVCS-Pro, you can also apply a floating label to all the files that are within a project by selecting the project node, and then using the context menu to apply the label. (QVCS-Enterprise does not yet support project or directory level operations).

Once you have a floating label in place for just those files where it is required, it's a simple operation to apply a regular (non-floating) label to just those files: Select the files (or project if you're using QVCS or QVCS-Pro), apply the label -- making sure to enable the 'Duplicate this label' check box, and in the associated combo box, select the floating label that you had earlier applied.

When the labeling operation completes, only those files that already had the floating label will get the new label. Files that didn't have the floating label will be skipped.

Now you can easily create your release build by doing a 'get by label' using the newly applied label that will only be associated with the files are actually part of the product.