Re: [Gramps-devel] Version control (was: New Family Tree Manager in svn)

[Alex R. <sh...@gr...>]

Eero,

On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 15:05 +0300, Eero Tamminen wrote:
> Well, RCS hadn't worked for me when I last tried it (but now that I tried
> with the 2.2.6 version in Ubuntu, it seemed to work fine), but more
> importantly:
> - Most people are not familiar with RCS like they are with CVS and SVN,
>   so they don't even consider using it. Hm, most people probably aren't
>   familiar with version control at all :-)
>   -> next two items would help
> - RCS doesn't have any good documentation (tutorials, HTML pages...):
>   -> A Gramps wiki page promoving version control use and explaining
>       how to setup RCS and use it with/from Gramps would help
> - I don't think that many UI tools support RCS (e.g. like CVS is supporte=
d
>   by Cervisia Konqueror plugin, CVSGUI (WinCVS, gcvs), viewcvs...)

Please please please, try the trunk when you get a chance, then
let's talk about RCS in the dbmanager. The dbmanager hides the details
of the RCS. The user can "archive" and "extract" version, that's all.

I suppose your criticism is valid for the CheckPoint plugin. I may agree
there, even though still if we manage things from gramps then it's probably
good enough. But try the dbmanager, I'm begging you :-)

> Last was what I originally had in mind, but now that I actually thought
> about it properly, the "UI" tool should really be Gramps specific,
> a database XML text diff doesn't really help people.  The features
> (from basic to more advanced) what this tool could have can be
> something like:
> - Number of added/removed/changed people/families/etc.
> - List of those objects (people's names etc)
> - Possibility to copy/merge these objects between versions
> - Viewing details of the differences in (visually pleasing and)
>   easily understandable format

Yes, I thought about it recently, and we could pull it off from
the diff. I agree, this would be a nice tool. When we get time :-)


> First two should be quite straightforward to do by checkouting both versi=
ons=20
> and doing some XML parsing for Gramps IDs and change timestamps.  This
> could be done also outside Gramps.

Yes. Just grepping on the diff between the version could do it I think.

> The last two would probably be best done in Gramps 4.x if that would supp=
ort
> having multiple databases open from the same Gramps process (like all
> word processors can).  :-)

The details are harder of course, but even the list of primary objects
that were changed/added/removed is a huge plus.

> PS. While checking the RCS stuff with Gramps 2.6 on Ubuntu Feisty, I noti=
ced
> (with "ls -l /proc/<gramps pid>/fd/") that Gramps keeps following files o=
pen
> all the time:
> - /usr/share/gramps/data/papersize.xml
> - /usr/share/gramps/data/templates/templates.xml
> If this is still the case with latest Gramps, couldn't it just read and
> close them?

I suppose it could. I can fix it, but I have to run now and I may forget
among other things. Could you please file bug report on this on
http://bugs.gramps-project.org tracker?

Thanks,
Alex

--=20
Alexander Roitman   http://gramps-project.org