Merge and visual merge

I'm getting around to adding the file level merge feature to QVCS-Enterprise. The goal is to make it drop-dead easy to use -- which can be a challenge for merge, especially when there are collisions... and I guess that's one of the things that has led me to put it off.

In any case, I've decided to go ahead, and already have a non-visual merge working. The non-visual merge works silently in the case where there are no overlaps, and fails (as it is supposed to!) in the case where there are any overlaps. The idea is that a visual merge will be required in the case where there are overlaps. A merge will only be attempted on a file that has a status of 'Merge Required'.

No predictions yet on how long it will take to complete... The non-visual merge went faster than I thought it might. I expect the visual merge will take a while longer, if only because it will require some usability after I get things roughed in.

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.12 now available

I just posted the 2.1.12 release of QVCS-Enterprise. This release cleans up a few bugs, and adds one nice little feature -- a 'Show in containing directory' menu option on the file context menu. When you have recursion enabled and have lots of files, it is sometimes difficult to see exactly where in the project directory hierarchy a given file might be located. With this new feature, all you have to do is select the file (with recursion enabled), then select the 'Show in containing directory' context menu, and the client will automatically navigate to the specific directory that contains the file... a nice little usability touch.

Details on the fixed bugs are available here. 

Enjoy.

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.

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.11 now available

I just posted the 2.1.11 release. You can download the bits here. 

Details on the changes in this release are here. 

UPDATE: Fix link typo.

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.11 to be published on Nov. 30.

I'll be publishing a 2.1.11 QVCS-Enterprise release this Friday (November 30).

This is a mainly a 'bug fix' release to clean up some issues discovered in the 2.1.10 release:

• Fix problem with 'checked in before' and 'checked in after' file filters.
• In built-in visual compare tool, pay attention to the 'ignore case' setting.
• Fix bug that prevented the deletion of a project that only had the 'Trunk' view.
• Fix a null pointer exception that occurs when trying to apply or remove a label from a file in a project that has just the 'Trunk' view.
• In the IDE integration .dll, make sure to delete the workfile at checkin time if the 'delete workfile' QVCS attribute is enabled.

The one 'feature' change for this release:

• Add the module description to the beginning of the information displayed in the 'Revision and Label Info' pane.

It always happens with a new release...

Whenever I publish a new product release, I get bug reports that point out problems that have existed for a long time. I suppose this is partly due to the closer scrutiny that a new release gets as users test it to evaluate whether it's worth their time or not. In any case, there are 2 problems that the new 2.1.10 release of QVCS-Enterprise has brought to light:

• In the 'checked in before' and 'checked in after' file filters, things work fine immediately after defining a filter collection that uses either of these two filter types; but fails with a null pointer exception if you try to use that filter collection after restarting the client application.
• In the built-in visual compare tool, the 'ignore case' flag was always ignored... i.e. while you could request that the visual compare ignore case in the compare, it would never ignore case.

Both of these bugs are now fixed in the code base, and the fixes will appear in the next build.

Googling Jim Voris

Occasionally, I'll 'Google' my own name to see what turns up. Lately, when I do this... yikes. (I won't supply the link, but you can try it yourself).

I don't live in Indiana , and as far as I know, I have absolutely no relation to the 'Jim D. Voris' listed as the first hit on Google's search.

The results point out some of the biases built in to the way Google sorts its search results: apparently government sources have a higher ranking that other sources, though it may just be that the page rank of that government site is higher than any of the other lower ranked sites that return hits for 'Jim Voris'.

In any case, for anyone who cares, my middle initial is not 'D'.

QVCS-Enterprise 2.1.10 Release Available

I just posted the first 'official' QVCS-Enterprise 2.1 release. You can download it from here. 

It has just a few cleanup changes since the 2.1.9.4 Release Candidate:

• I finally got the code in to put up a busy indicator when you change the column sort order.
• Changed the sort order for the revision information shown for the Read-Only label based view so that the revision information is displayed (like the Read-Write label based view) so that the view's tip revision sorts to the top of the list of revision information. This change is more important in those cases where the view's tip is on a branch instead of the Trunk.

For those of you paying attention, this release has been under contruction for a long time. It represents a lot of work -- 1577 changes across 559 different files. The source and documentation for this release is composed of 1126 separate files.

Upgrading to this release is pretty simple: Just shutdown your server application, and replace your existing server_out.jar file with the one found in the new qvcse.zip file. Restart the server, and you should be good to go... clients will get updated 'automatically' as they login to the new server.

The server does have to generate some meta-data the first time it runs -- so this could make startup the first time slower than usual -- but after that meta-data has been created, startup performance should be similar to what you've seen in earlier releases.