Seamless integration with source control systems

[marc_scheuner]

Folks,

I'd be more than happy to get TextPad 5.0 to integrate seemlessly with various common source control systems, such as MS Visual SourceSafe and SourceGear's Vault.

I was hoping to get a "Open from Source Control" command / menu item, which would display the source control contents (as a treeview, most likely), and allow me to pick a single or multiple files to edit - either just get the latest version to view, or check it out to change it.

[ramonsky]

It already does, surely, in the sense that EVERYTHING integrates seamlessly with CVS.

I use CVS all the time in conjunction with TextPad (and also in conjunction with lots of other programs too, but we won't go into that on this forum).

The most seamless integration I have encountered so far is called TortoiseCVS. It actually integrates TextPad with CVS even better than Microsoft Visual Studio integrates with Microsoft Visual Source Safe! How so? Because TortoiseCVS integrates with Windows Explorer, so you can actually see the checkout, modified, etc. status of a file under CVS control just by looking at its icon in any Explorer window, Open dialog or Save dialog - including TextPad's.

Check it out (pun intended ). You might find your problem is already solved.

Jill

[marc_scheuner]

It already does, surely, in the sense that EVERYTHING integrates seamlessly with CVS.

Thanks, but I hate to break your bubble - not *EVERYONE* uses CVS, or gets to choose whether or not they use CVS......

Marc

[ramonsky]

It isn't TextPad's job to make up for the deficiencies in Microsoft's software. If the version control system you are currently using doesn't do the job properly, then why not use a different one? If you have no choice (for example because it's a company decision) then it's a BAD company decision, and I sympathise - but it's still not TextPad's problem.

I agree that not everyone uses CVS. But it's also true that not every user of a version control system uses TextPad, yet they all will work with any text editor. For example - I edit many kinds of files. When I edit HTML files, I sometimes use a WYSIWYG HTML editor; when I edit Word Documents, I use MS Word. Perhaps it would be nice if ALL of these editors "seamlessly" integrated with every version control system that exists. But they don't, so why should TextPad alone? As I see it, the question basically becomes:

* Is it the job of a version control system to seamlessly integrate with all editors?, or
* Is the job of an editor to seamlessly integrate with all version control systems?

Given that the internal details of version control systems differ from vendor to vendor, and are in some cases inhibited by proprietry algorithms and licensing problems, I humbly suggest that it must be the version control system's responsibility, not the editor's responsibility. This is the only approach that makes logical sense.

The key word here is "seamlessly". MS Source Safe (and every other version control system there is) *DOES* integrate with TextPad - it just doesn't do it "seamlessly". To make it work, you have to run VSS explicitly, and click on its buttons and menu items. Okay, so that is less convenient than the "seamless" approach of finding those menu items in TextPad, but is explicitly running a second application really too much work for you to do? Does the justify the extra work you are asking of Helios, and the code bloat that all of us would have to accept?

You see, every enhancement suggestion must be considered a balance between the benefit of its implementation versus the work involved in the enhancements. Some of the enhancements suggested in this forum (for example, "allow nested comments") are so simple and trivial that Helios might as well implement them even if the benefit is negliable, as it's a few lines of code at most. Others (like this) would an awful lot of work to implement, and would add an awful lot of code to TextPad. In this circumstances, some considerable justification would be needed to balance that effort. Given that seamless integration with SOME version control systems already exists, and given that non-seamless integration with ALL version control system also already exists, what need is there really to add this feature to TextPad:

I was hoping to get a "Open from Source Control" command / menu item, which would display the source control contents (as a treeview, most likely), and allow me to pick a single or multiple files to edit - either just get the latest version to view, or check it out to change it.

given that the feature already exists in VSS itself?

In my opinion, if your problem is that MS Visual Source Safe doesn't do the job you want, the people to whom to send enhancement requests are Microsoft, not TextPad.

Jill

[marinhekman]

maybe you want to try this:

-how to integrate tortoise cvs in textpad-

http://textpad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5281

[scottbilas]

VSS has a command line exe. You can use it the same as CVS, although obviously the commands are different. No need to run the GUI tool.

That said, the original poster is talking about seamless integration the way most Windows editors do: using Microsoft's SCC interface. This is something that originated with VSS but is supported by other SCM's like Perforce (which I use). On the other end, plenty of editors support it like Codewright, VS.NET, and Primalscript (all of which I also use). It's convenient because you can see at a glance of your project tree the files that are checked out, and whether or not anyone else has them checked out, etc.

I've used Tortoise and know what you're talking about with Explorer. It may be better integration than VS.NET for you, but not for me. Depends on the type of development you do. I usually work completely in the project tree, and don't touch Explorer much.

Anyway, command line support is a poor substitute once you've worked with full integration.

But on the other hand, TextPad doesn't have a "project" concept, so any time spent on SCM integration would probably be wasted. If all you want to do is diff, check things in and out, and add things to version control, then command line tools installed into the Tools menu will suffice.

Scott

[skaemper]

I agree that not everyone uses CVS. But it's also true that not every user of a version control system uses TextPad, yet they all will work with any text editor. For example - I edit many kinds of files. When I edit HTML files, I sometimes use a WYSIWYG HTML editor; when I edit Word Documents, I use MS Word. Perhaps it would be nice if ALL of these editors "seamlessly" integrated with every version control system that exists.

I second that. I use a versioning system for more or less all my important material, no matter what it is: source code, HTML for the web site, Office documents of nearly ervery content (software documentation, important letters, whatever). Any sufficiently good versioning system will cope with this. Subersion does it , CVS will do, even RCS should be OK.
And any other system should do it too. You certainly won't expect any editor or Office System or whatever vendor to 'integrate' their software with, say, the 10 or 20 most used version control systems.

But now that I'm thinking of it: A wide spread standard interface for versioning systems would allow vendors to just implement one integration that supports all versioning systens. Well, in principle it would...
WebDAV could be one such interface.

Stephan

[lartninja]

I wouldn't go near VSS - not after spending about 2 weeks recovering it from a major corruption incident. It's a complete liability.

I now use TortoiseCVS and the CVS server is a Sun Ultra 30 running NetBSD and bog standard CVS. Never a problem and perfect editor integration.

As for common integration - every source control product should have a command line interface which allows scripted releases and bulk imports. If it's there, Textpad will work with it.