Hey guys,
A while back I mentioned looking into getting a source code management site up for you to use for projects such as the Phoenix code, something like SourceForge. I haven’t gotten a lot of progress on that since the offhanded comment, but I think we’ve got a workable solution figured out, and will (hopefully) be able to get something up and running soon(ish)!
I just wanted to check in and ask: is this something that will still be useful?
There are at least two different levels of possibilities for how something could be useful.
The first is the development of code or other things. This would help with some of the larger programs like the phoenix code. I have not used SourceForge. The places I have used source control, the servers and software were internal to the company. They had some nice capabilities, like you could see what code you changed as compared to what is checked in. Likewise some versions allowed multiple people to check out same file and it could help with merging in the changes. As I said this would be good for larger programs or potentially for electronic designs, so we might not lose things like the Gerber files or the like for different versions of boards.
The second usage would be to help the normal users, with something like the Parallax Object Exchange. For example the the Brat tutorials, could be written to say download the latest BratX program from the exchange. Here the users could see the different versions of these programs. There may be comments that say Version X - Changes necessary to run on Basic Micro IDE X or later. Would be great if it had the capability for updates loaded by users to show up as Tentative or the like and only Admin/Moderator/??? could later mark the update as Approved… Just some ideas.
Be curious to see what you came up with.
Kurt
Also I wonder
Hi Beth,
I’m not familiar with the working of SourceForge. Like Kurt I’m used to source control for projects at work. At work we use MS Source Safe or MS Team Foundation Server. Both manage source files. A developer can claim a file for exclusive access. N so only one developer can change a file at the time. Sources have to build before they can be checked in again. etc. Projects at my work easily contain more then 1.000 files. (My current project: 2.739 files and 80 mb 
) This makes it easy to check out one file and leave all other files accessible for the other developers.
This kind of source management does not work for the phoenix code. The phoenix code only has a few files. If one developer claims the file for exclusive access nobody can change the file. With only 3 files this will almost end up with all files being claimed by somebody else.
As I said, I don’t know how SourceForge works but if it also include things like version control and file sharing it should be something. Especially when some user can get access to beta version. And guests only to release versions.
I defiantly want to see what you came up with. Thanks for the support!
Xan
