Difference Viewer / Subversion (SVN) support

[Hermann Hild]

I would like to endorse the wish for subversion (SVN) Version Control.

And, as also mentioned before, I think the only thing that would be actually needed is some sort of a viewer which allows to compare two different versions of a *.hmxz / *.hmxp file in a well readable format, and maybe some functionality to assign/merge the difference to the one or other version.

Thanks!

[mmueller]

using SVN too

[peter.macej]

You can try TamTam SVN SCC. It adds SCC API support (recognized by H&M) to Subversion. Just install it and open H&M. It seemed to work OK on my machine. I haven't played with it too much because I'm using TortoiseSVN from outside H&M. For now it's enough for me.

[mmueller]

I'm using Tortoise SVN from outside of H&M also.
If I'll find time, I'll try your suggestion. Thx

[kurgbe]

We are also using subversion.

1) We have notice that Publishing a project in H&M modifies the hmxz file (very strange, isn't it?): changes are sometimes a simple space added before a closing tag or two lines swapped! For Subversion these are considered as changes, which is very annoying because there are no changes in the project itself.

It would be helpful if ecsoftware could have a consistent and reproducible way to create/modify the hmxz files and all the other files for that matter

2) For the time being we have decided to subversion lock the hmxz file. We will have a master author who will look after styles, tree structure ..... anything which is stored in the hmxz file. For the individual xml topic files, we put them in a source folder that non-master authors commit. These authors never commit the hmxz file, only the topic files.

That way we avoid conflicts (as long as no two authors modify the same topic. But since the topic are normally short, this should not happen). Of course we could also lock the topic files themselves.

3) We will look at TamTam SVN SCC.

It would be nice if all users of Svn keeps this post alive with their experience on the svn-h&m integration.

[Tim Green]

Hi "kurgbe",

We're going to look into the issue with those changes in .hmxz files, those were not known to date. However, you will always have some changes in the .hmxz file when you publish because Help & Manual always stores the last publishing information from the Publish dialog.

Also, unless you have a special reason for working in .hmxz it really isn't very effective to save .hmxz files in a version control repository since it is a single binary file. If you use a version control system you should always save in uncompressed XML with an .hmxp project file. Quite apart from anything else, the publish information will then only be stored in one of your project files and all the others will remain unchanged. In addition to that all your project files will be plain-text XML files that your version control system will be able to manage properly.

Last but not least, uncompressed XML is a more secure and robust format -- it is not possible for damage to a single file to trash your entire project as it is with the .hmxz file, which is actually a ZIP archive.

[Alexander Halser]

We have notice that Publishing a project in H&M modifies the hmxz file

Save your project in uncompressed HMXP format if you want to use it with a version control system. HMXZ is a zip file. Even a small change can create huge differences in the zip file. Tracking differences in a zip is next to impossible.

[kurgbe]

Sorry my comment was about the xml format - hmxp (not the binary format)

As an example, look below at the screenshot of my diff tool. (I only did a simple publish between the revisions)

[issamo1515]

Thank you peter.macej for your information about TamTam SVN SCC. It adds SCC API support (recognized by H&M) to Subversion.I've try it but it's not work correctly, indeed to connect H&M to VCS we need two arguments, but with TamTam we can use only one ( see the attached picture).

another software that can give all needed arguments to H&M and work better is pushOk , the only problem that we get with this software is that H&M don't lock files before starting edition, and that causes conflicts every time we save the project.

[mmueller]

Here is my experiance:

1. I'm using a checked-out working copy. I tried to connect to SVN. This resulted in a warning. H&M deleted all files in the top level directory of my project.

2. I tried to check out with H&M + TamTam into an empty dir. This resulted in an undisclosed error.

BTW: TamTam displays a small window where you have to confirm evaluation. This shall prevent from productive use. But you have to wait about 10 seconds to enable this button, whiche prevented TamTam from being evaluated further. De-installed.

[Hermann Hild]

The earlier discussion about TamTamSVN and the other tools seems to indicate that it is certainly nice, but not crucially important to access the Version Control from inside Help&Manual. Rather we would need a tool to view the differences between two different versions of a HM project.

I understand that this can already be done on the basis of the XML files, but that is of course not very convenient, if not near to impossible for more complex changes.

Other users, do you agree?

[Tim Green]

Update: Although we're not participating in this discussion at the moment we are following it closely and we will be looking into the possibility of providing this kind of functionality, although I can't promise a time frame at the moment.

Does the general consensus appear to be that SubVersion is currently the most important VCS alongside Visual SourceSafe?

[mmueller]

Since SVN is superseding CVS, I would say yes.

[Greg Smith]

A lot of folks in the software community still use CVS, as do we.

[Malcolm Jacobson]

We use TortoiseSVN daily. Would love to see support for this added at some stage.