Any StarTeam users out there?
I'm using StarTeam 2009, which comes with some client tools, including a command line tool, stcmd.exe.
I'm reorganizing a somewhat large Java project containing thousands of .java files and resource files. I would like to know if there is a way using stcmd or some other scripting tool to move files from one folder in the StarTeam repository to another folder.
Of course I can use the StarTeam client interface to drag and drop files, but I'm hoping to avoid that.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
stcmd gives you the ability to add, modify, and delete files and folders. It doesn't provide a mechanism for sharing or moving.
It may be possible to do some of the moves using VCMUtility, but that's not really what it was designed for and I would guess it would end up being more of a pain than doing it by hand.
The StarTeam SDK does provide all the tools necessary to do moving and sharing. It may be worthwhile to look into writing a small utility to do what you're looking for.
Related
We want to Sync our dev environment to Prod. There are different kinds of files dlls, aspx, html, txt, folders, subdirectories. Is there any tool that can give us report that states these files are out of sync based on modified, created date or version
Is it possible to copy out of sync files from one location to other. We are using windows server 2003
Thanks!
Kris
there are a lot of version control / file comparison tools.. I personally like Scooter Soft's Beyond Compare http://www.scootersoftware.com, it's a bit simple (which is why i like it), then there's this one, which i use at my day job: diffMerge http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/. Honestly, there's a ton of tools for this, each with there different pro's / con's.. it will depend on the granular needs of your situation.
Google "file comparison tool"
So I have been working on a few projects using audio and images from files in Visual Studio C++. As of now they are just test projects, but I am going to be moving now towards making 2D games for fun using SFML and a few different audio libraries. The problem is this, I want to give out my games to others so they can play and test them, and I may try to develop some sort of Multiplayer for some, thus increasing my desire to give it out to others, however I do not know how I can give them the games with all the files included. I used to just be able to grab the exe files out of the debug or release folder, but these projects have files they rely on.
So here is my question, is it possible to export an exe file that contains all the other files (wav's, jpg's etc.)? If this question sounds overwhelmingly stupid then tell me, because I have very little idea of what an exe is, and whether it can hold those files (I am used to java, where u can simply export something into a runnable jar and because it is an archive, with all of the resources prepackaged in there, I don't know if an exe shares these traits). If this is not possible, or there are better alternatives, what are they? I have seen things and know how to load sounds from arrays of data, would that be a better solution? Or are there other options? On top of that, in the debug and release folder there are several DLL files which I need to run the project, is there a way to compress these into the exe or will those have to be in the same folder as the exe no matter what?
The real question here is what is the best way to export an exe file of my project so that I can utilize all of my sound and image resources as well as the dll's into an easy to distribute copy? Thank you in advance to any advice.
It's not possible to export an exe that contains your exe and multiple other files. You can use an installer (such as InnoSetup, which is free), or bundle the extra files into a resource and load them from resource at runtime. (The first has the benefit of being able to ask the user where to install, create shortcuts and folders, Start Menu items, etc.).
There's two easy ways to make a file that you can easily give to people to test and/or play your game.
The first option is using an installer, as mentioned in Ken White's answer. It's a good method for "final" releases, but it adds an extra step if you just want to send a copy of your game to someone to test it.
The second method is put all your files into a single .zip file (or .rar, or .tar.bz). Basically, this is a lot like Java's .jar file, with all the dlls, image files, and sound files into a single file. Recent versions of Windows have the ability to create zip files built in, so the best way to do it is just zip up the Debug or Release version with all the files, and unzip to an empty folder somewhere, and test the game. Doing that will let you make sure you got all the files you need. This way, you can easily send your game to someone, they can simply unzip it to a folder somewhere, and play, no messing about with installers.
The bonus third option is sticking the files into a resource and loading them at runtime, or similar things (it's possible to get really fancy and combine all the files into a single EXE, but it's not exactly easy, and not really advisable).
I would like to make a backup of my project, but the folder now exceeds 6.6 GB mainly through extra libraries like boost etc, but even if I just select the folders with my sources, I end up with big files like: .ipch, .sdf and potentially others. To make matters worse I use eclipse to code and VS to compile, so that adds to the mess, although I have the impression that only VS creates big files.
In case shit hits the fan I would like to be able to unpack one archive, and have everything in there like the project settings and solution files, and the sources so that I can easily open it again in VS. I can live with having to re-download boost or other third party libs.
How do you tackle this problem and do I need to preserve file like .sdf?
Answer:
Thanks for all the tips. I will now adopt the solution proposed by LocustHorde because that seems to fit my needs best. I simply want one file that I can take offsite as a safe backup (and I don't want to use an online service). Storing all versions of all files doesn't seem to work towards smaller and simpler and it would be a bit overkill in this case, although I will look to install some version control system because I have no experience with them and I would like to get some...
Final Answer
After having a good look I found that dishing out which files had to be ignored by the winrar archiving was still a hassle. I finally ended up installing Git out of curiosity and liked it. So I now have some of my projects in a local repository. From eclipse I can easily mark files and directories for being ignored, and to make a backup I use git-extensions to clone the repo. I still need to look at purging old versions, which isn't very userfriendly in Git, but seems to be possible at least and then i will just 7zip the folder up. In the worst case I just delete the git database and I just have the last version of my source files. Or maybe I can checkout to another directory. We'll see.
First: Instead of doing a backup, I would strongly recommend using a version control system (VCS) like Subversion, Mercurial, or Git. This is the professional equivalent of a backup, except it maintains every version of every file—not just a copy of the latest version.
Even with a VCS, you will still need to decide which files to check-in to the VCS, and you don’t want to back up files that can be easily re-generated.
For my projects, I generally don’t check-in:
Generated executables (the output in the Release, Debug, x64\Release, and x64\Debug directories).
Pre-compiled headers (the ipch folder)
The browsing database (sdf files)
All of these things can be re-generated by rebuilding your project. If you are working as part of a team, you probably shouldn’t check in:
Your personal settings (.suo)
You can always re-create this if needed.
A particularly nice way to backup your stuff is to put your source in a revision control system. I am using git sometimes, and other times mercurial. Using git I can ignore the files that should not be backed up, by adding them to .gitignore:
Debug
Yokto.sdf
Yokto.suo
*.filters
*.user
ipch
Release
Yokto.opensdf
*.opensdf
*.sdf
With git I can set up a backup repository on a network drive and simply push to it every now and then.
you can write a simple script (batch file) that only zips the types of files you want. suppose, you want to zip all your .aspx, .cs, .config, .xsd files only,
suppose you have winrar installed in your c:\program files\winrar
and your project is in c:\project\MyBigProject
then, just open your notepad, copy paste this, and save as "script.bat" (dont forget the double quotes while saving, you need to save it with double quotes, so that notepad saves as .bat extention instead of .txt)
so to backup (in other words, to zip wanted files) :
"C:\Program Files\WinRAR\rar" a -r0 -ed MyBackup.rar c:\project\MyBigProject\*.aspx,*.cs,*.xsd,*.config
the syntax is like this:
"path to winrar folder" 'switches' "Name of completed rar file" 'folder to zip'
just make sure the paths are in proper order. the "a -r0 -ed" parts are switches, and you can find out all about the switches here:
http://acritum.com/winrar/manual/index.html?html_helpswitches.htm
I use the "Ignore files" switch (http://acritum.com/winrar/manual/index.html?html_helpswxa.htm) to ignore all files and folders that I dont want (with wildcards) and My project is about 86 mb, when It gets compressed just with code files, it comes up to 6mb.
its the best way to do it really. If you need more help, please ask!
edit: Also, Look into SVN (its free!) - I use svn too, and its really helpfull. there is even a free tool called AnkhSvn to integrate into visual studio. its just fantastic!
Doing a "clean" before archiving removes most of what you don't need.
Edited to add:
Of course a version control system is essential for any ongoing project, but that's not what he's asking.
Suppose you release the next version of your software, you will have to manually update your WIX files to remove obsolete files and add new files, etc.
My use case is as simple as "recursively add the files under /sample/path in the user target C:\Program Files\MyApp".
Is there a program that does this sort of automation?
For WiX v3 (and a free solution), look at heat.exe. If you have more advanced harvesting needs, there is a commercial option from FireGiant**.
** Disclaimer: I am the benevolent dictator of the WiX Toolset and CEO of FireGiant. We contribute to the open source project and provide commercial solutions around the project. Pick what works best for you.
If Heat doesn't meet your needs, you may want to look at Paraffin by John Robbins.
For Wix 2 there was a tool called Mallow that did this. It was freeware and I got the source somewhere. This functionality may also be available in Heat.exe at this point, but I am not sure.
It also seems some guys in the Wix community are experimenting with a sort of automatic scanner feature where you can put files in a pre-defined release location and new msi files are continually created - ala "continuous integration".
Are you looking to do this for a lot of packages, or just for one or a few ones? Let me know the scope and I can send you the Mallow code, or dig up links for the "continuous integration" oriented solutions.
You can use heat.exe as Rob stated already (i think he knows since he is the man behind), or you can write a simple harvester script, that evaluate the wix-script as pre-compile action of the wix-project. We used a vbscript for that since heat did not suit our problems, cause of different files, different directories, etc.
WixEdit has an import folder function that can grab the entire contents of a folder and turn it into Directory/Component/File nodes.
Is it a best practice to commit a .sln file to source control? When is it appropriate or inappropriate to do so?
Update
There were several good points made in the answers. Thanks for the responses!
I think it's clear from the other answers that solution files are useful and should be committed, even if they're not used for official builds. They're handy to have for anyone using Visual Studio features like Go To Definition/Declaration.
By default, they don't contain absolute paths or any other machine-specific artifacts. (Unfortunately, some add-in tools don't properly maintain this property, for instance, AMD CodeAnalyst.) If you're careful to use relative paths in your project files (both C++ and C#), they'll be machine-independent too.
Probably the more useful question is: what files should you exclude? Here's the content of my .gitignore file for my VS 2008 projects:
*.suo
*.user
*.ncb
Debug/
Release/
CodeAnalyst/
(The last entry is just for the AMD CodeAnalyst profiler.)
For VS 2010, you should also exclude the following:
ipch/
*.sdf
*.opensdf
Yes -- I think it's always appropriate. User specific settings are in other files.
Yes you should do this. A solution file contains only information about the overall structure of your solution. The information is global to the solution and is likely common to all developers in your project.
It doesn't contain any user specific settings.
You should definitely have it. Beside the reasons other people mentioned, it's needed to make one step build of the whole projects possible.
I generally agree that solution files should be checked in, however, at the company I work for we have done something different. We have a fairly large repository and developers work on different parts of the system from time to time. To support the way we work we would either have one big solution file or several smaller. Both of these have a few shortcomings and require manual work on the developers part. To avoid this, we have made a plug-in that handles all that.
The plug-in let each developer check out a subset of the source tree to work on simply by selecting the relevant projects from the repository. The plugin then generates a solution file and modifies project files on the fly for the given solution. It also handles references. In other words, all the developer has to do is to select the appropriate projects and then the necessary files are generated/modified. This also allows us to customize various other settings to ensure company standards.
Additionally we use the plug-in to support various check-in policies, which generally prevents users from submitting faulty/non-compliant code to the repository.
Yes, things you should commit are:
solution (*.sln),
project files,
all source files,
app config files
build scripts
Things you should not commit are:
solution user options (.suo) files,
build generated files (e.g. using a build script) [Edit:] - only if all necessary build scripts and tools are available under version control (to ensure builds are authentic in cvs history)
Regarding other automatically generated files, there is a separate thread.
Yes, it should be part of the source control.
When ever you add/remove projects from your application, .sln would get updated and it would be good to have it under source control. It would allow you to pull out your application code 2 versions back and directly do a build (if at all required).
Yes, you always want to include the .sln file, it includes the links to all the projects that are in the solution.
Under most circumstances, it's a good idea to commit .sln files to source control.
If your .sln files are generated by another tool (such as CMake) then it's probably inappropriate to put them into source control.
We do because it keeps everything in sync. All the necessary projects are located together, and no one has to worry about missing one. Our build server (Ant Hill Pro) also uses the sln to figure which projects to build for a release.
We usually put all of our solutions files in a solutions directory. This way we separate the solution from the code a little bit, and it's easier to pick out the project I need to work on.
The only case where you would even considder not storing it in source control would be if you had a large solution with many projects which was in source control, and you wanted to create a small solution with some of the projects from the main solution for some private transient requirement.
Yes - Everything used to generate your product should be in source control.
We keep or solution files in TFS Version Control. But since or main solution is really large, most developers have a personal solution containing only what they need. The main solution file is mostly used by the build server.
.slns are the only thing we haven't had problems with in tfs!