GRAFUG Meeting May 9, 2009

 VFPx (CodePlex) has some new updates:

• 06/17/2009 FoxCharts 1.19b Release Candidate - ActiveX-free modern charting

• 05/25/2009 VFP9 Reporting APPs v9.2.1 (beta) - Updates to VFP 9.0 SP2 Reporting APPs (beta)

• 05/252009  GDIPlusX 1.20 - Wrapper class for the GDIPlus library

Announcements:

SW Fox is scheduled for October 15 - 18, 2009
There will be 6 presenters from MI/OH:
Rick Schummer
Cathy Pountney
Jody Meyer
Paul Mrozowski
Toni Feltman
Mike Feltman

User group does not usually meet in July and August, but since there are 6 speakers wanting to do practice sessions, we will hold an August 8th meeting this year and not meet in December this year.

August 8, 2009 - Rick Schummer/Jim Nelsen
September 11, 2009 - Cathy Pountney
October 10, 2009 - Mike Feltman/ Jody Meyer

May Recap

Toni asked and most attendees at the meeting, use VSS or nothing.

Toni Feltman of F1 Technologies,formerly with Fox Software and co-creator with her husband, Mike of Visual Fox Express framework practiced her South West Fox pre-conference presentation on the open source product, SubVersion. SubVersion is a Source control application like VSS, but offers many nice features.

In a multi-delveloper environment, SubVersion allows more than 1 developer to "update" (similar to get latest and checkout in VSS), each make changes to the source and depending upon the changes, SubVersion will either "merge" all changes together during the "Commit" (check-in in VSS) or force the "last person" who "Commits" to review the changes. The "commit" process shows all changes in separate windows and allows highlighting of
code blocks and whether to merge the code or whatever. All changes are on the local H.D. and compared to the code in the repository on the server.
 

Very cool! Mike and Toni have VFE under Subversion source control as well as some of the consulting projects they do.

Subversion's greatest feature is that when setup as recommended, uses 3 folders, Branches, Shared and Trunk. Branches contain the source code of the most recent official release. Trunk contains new work. Shared in self-explanatory. If a change to the released source is necessary, the code is made there and re=released. No need to comment out new features to make certain that incomplete/untested code gets into the released application. When these changes to released code are ready to be included in "future" work, the "merge" features help reconcile the changes.

Why Subversion? 

1) Version control - saves time, allows trying design ideas and recovering if ideas don't pan out.
2) Subversion is free and lightweight
3) Server side tool - access is only command line access

Why tortoise?
 

1) Windows based
2) Will send links for inclusion

SVN is not a VPN, Rick Strahl has information on setting up.

Green check - up to date
yellow icon - some differences
red icon - local copy is different from server copy basics
no locks - VSS - checkout, won't allow multiple checkouts
update: notifies you that when you've both made changes to the same object (Means pull down code from server, check-out)
commit: pushes data to server (check-in)
dealing with binaries: all but .prgs don't compare well, convert to text and have them under version control. Several tools are available to convert .scx/.vcx/.frx/.lbl, etc. into text and after getting updated source code, back into the VFP binary files.


Existing Projects sample

TwoFox: uses xml to represent text file
Subversion is Linux based, so filenames are case sensitive
Modi comm saves filename with .PRG in uppercase, .prg original was lc, file no longer under version control until extension is changed.

Tortoise - diff tool shows changes between the working copy (local) and on the server
- Can define the diff tool you want to use'\
- Merges are done locally - must resolve changes locally before commit
- Allows Revert to go back to specific revision


Project
trunk - active development of new features
app
shared
branches - contains production code: make bug fixes here - manually send changes
tags allows you to
 

Future Presentations

August 8, 2009 - Must see! Rick Schummer and Jim Nelsen will be here.  They are practicing for their Southwest Fox sessions.

September  1, 2009 - Must see!  Cathy Pountney will be here.  She are practicing for her Southwest Fox sessions.

October 10, 2009 - Must See! Mike Feltman and Jody Meyer will be here. They are practicing for their Southwest Fox Session.

SWAG Drawings

A new shipment of SWAG from Microsoft came in for members only. At least 2 items will be given away at each meeting. The presenter gets 1st choice.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the March meeting.