CVS source control for RH8

[Salim_sayed]

Hi Experts,

I am planning to use CVS as source control for RH8 HTML. I am not finding sufficient documentation for this. One article said that RH supports those versioncontrol tools which are SCC compliant. I know there are plugins for CVS which can make it SCC compliant, but I don't want to go that route. I would rather use WinCVS to check in-out files instead of doing it via RH8 IDE.

Here is what I thought I would be doing, please advice

1. I will check in all folders and subfolders created for a project into CVS (excluding PSS, CPD files).
2. I will edit files using RH8 IDE then check in the changed files from WinCVS.
3. When I generate output, it by default goes into "\!SSL!" folder. I am thinking to check that in to CVS too, but I observered that everytime I generate the output all files under  "\!SSL!" folder are regenerated. So from CVS point of view, these files were deleted and then re-added. Will this cause any trouble? Please advice how you guys are using CVS with RH?

Thanks

Salim

[Captiv8r]

Hi Salim

You seem to be indicating you do not plan on working with RoboHelp integrated with CVS where it handles things for you, right? If so, I don't believe the recommendations of the four files NOT to check in and out of source control really apply. I think they cause issues when RoboHelp attempts to manage the check in and check out process. Basically, the way it would work is that you just check it all out and check it all back in if you want to use the source control as a separate application. Certainly it won't hurt anything to follow the practice of excluding those file types, but I personally never saw them as necessary to exclude. I worked for years with Microsoft Visual Source Safe and always included all source files with no unwanted side effects. Then again, I did always check out the whole project when I wanted to work on things. So maybe that was the difference.

I've seen many folks that claim a need to actually check the output into source control. But I find that to be redundant. After all, you observed yourself that the output is re-created each time you build help. However, I do understand you could be in a situation whereby developers are depending on the output files to be among the files residing in the source control system.

Sorry, but I cannot answer anything WRT PVCS. For that question you really need someone that has worked with PVCS and knows its innner workings. You may need to locate a forum dedicated to PVCS and ask there.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Salim_sayed]

Thanks a lot Rick for such wonderful reply.

My decision for not to use CVS integrated with RH was because I thought it might be little difficult to set up. Can you tell me or point me any documentation on how to set up CVS with RH8?

Thanks for your help.

Salim

[Captiv8r]

Hi Salim

Sorry, but I haven't a clue other than to say RTFM (Read The Friendly Manual). I've used RoboHelp with Microsoft Visual Source Safe and I've used it with a product called Star Team. In both setups, I worked as you describe. Where I do the source control separately from RoboHelp. Aside from showing others the essentials of using RoboSource Control in a classroom environment, I have no real "life experience" with configuring it to work with other source systems.

Hopefully another author can shed some light here.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Salim_sayed]

Hi Experts,

I checked in all project files into CVS. Then I check them out to a fresh folder and open it using RH 8. It opend the project fine but after I traverse through the nodes on the left side for few seconds, it crashes. I have no clue why it crashes.

I checked that CVS correctly identified binary and text files, so shouldn't be any issue to binary file being represented as text.

Where can I see the error message? How do I debug.

Thanks

Salim

[Salim_sayed]

This issue got fixed by removing  .cpd, .hhp, .ldb, and .pss files from CVS. So when I check out the RH prject in some other machine it doesn't fetch those files. These files get created automatically when one opens RH project. So the conclusion is - don't check in  .cpd, .hhp, .ldb, and .pss files at all.