[AccessD] Access source control

Michael Bahr jedi at charm.net
Wed Jul 14 11:19:18 CDT 2010


John, SVN works the same way as VSS, ClearCase, PVCS, etc.  You add your
files or project the first time, this is the base line revision.  This
revision is annotated like 0.001 or something like that.

Then you do a "Checkout" which should add a marker in SVN to indicate that
those files have been checked-out.  By checking out you are allowed to
"Check-In" the files.  This does not overwrite or destroy the previous
file, just adds another copy to the revisioning process.  This increases
the revision by one like 0.002.  Now you can do a differential between
0.001 and 0.002.  BTW, differentials only work on text file, not binary. 
If you do a "Get" and you make changes you can not do a check-in, you must
do a "Check-Out" first.   So over time you will have many revisions of
files and at some point you will want to "release" the files or project as
Version 1.000.  Eveything before version 1.000 would be your developement
work for example.  Now you have version control.

Then you continue with your developement with revisions (check-out, make
changes, check-in) until you do another release, for example Ver 1.100. 
Here is where you can do differentials between the various releases.

Now SVN has (should) features that you would really want like header
information in the files.  This is important information like date, time,
author, description, revision number, and possibly version number.  SVN
probrably uses some keywords to that you must place in the header the
first time (the baseline) and SVN will automatically update these keywords
everytime you do a check-in.  The most important items in the header are
the date and revision.  So if you were to make a hard copy or have several
soft copies hanging around of the source code you can easily identify the
revision, otherwise it would be very difficult.  Doing things your way of
sucking out the objects each time I think would eliminate the header
information thus rendering the check-out files difficult to track.

So I hope you understand the process of revision and version.  Your can be
be done but I think it is a lot of work dealing with Access objects. 
Using SVN for .Net projects should be very easy to use and very
beneficial.

On another note, I would suggest that you come up with a plan for version
control, or SCM (Software Configuration Management).  This is for you and
your customers.

Mike...

> Yea, but I want source control.
>
> John W. Colby
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>
>
> Dan Waters wrote:
>> <I am currently faced with a set of FEs that I need to see the
>> differentials
>> of.>
>>
>> FMS has a utility you can purchase called Access Detective.  It's about
>> a
>> couple hundred dollars, and you'd quickly get that back in time saved.
>>
>> HTH,
>> Dan
>>
>>
>> Charlotte Foust wrote:
>>> I guess the success will depend on what you hope to gain.  Without a
>>> checkin/out from within Access, any changes to a database will have to
>>> be manually exported and then imported to subversion, right?  I'm not
>>> familiar with the product, so how do you keep versions of the objects
>>> rather than overwriting, or does it matter?
>>>
>>> Charlotte
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 4:21 PM, jwcolby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> I am trying a workaround.  Max has written code that exports all the
>> objects in an access database
>>>> to text files.  It seems a short step to using that to get them into
>> subversion.
>>>> John W. Colby
>>>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Charlotte Foust wrote:
>>>>> How would you move items in an out of Access?  Source Safe uses an
>>>>> Access add-in to handle source control at the object level.  Is there
>>>>> something similar for subversion, or are you trying a workaround?
>>>>>
>>>>> Charlotte
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:35 PM, jwcolby
>>>>> <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>>> I am wondering whether we could put together subversion and Access
>>>>>> to
>> do source control.
>>>>>> Max's eatbloat will export and import most things Access into a
>> directory structure.  Subversion
>>>>>> could be used to move that stuff into version control.  Once in
>> subversion, we might be able to do
>>>>>> differencing etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Whaddayathink?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> John W. Colby
>>>>>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>>>>>> --
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>>>>>> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>>>>>>
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