Bundling with TortoiseSVN
Posted by stefan.fuhrmann.1974 on 2011-12-04 19:14
SITUATION
EasySVN currently only provides update and commit functionality.
New files will be added automatically and missing ones be deleted.
So, we rely on "some other" SVN client to at least do the initial
checkout. Inspecting and reverting changes, specific conflict
resolution and other SVN functionality will also require a tool
like TortoiseSVN.
EasySVN will give the option to use TSVN dialogs instead of the
built-in ones but this is purely optional. Because EasySVN is
still minimalistic, most users will install TSVN as well. That is
an inconvenience.
STRATEGIC OPTIONS
1. Keep EasySVN a completely separate tool that is good neighbours
(don't interfere and prevent interference from others) with other SVN
clients on the same computer.
To be viable as an independent client, we need a check-out function.
Future releases will focus on providing smart / automatic usage of
further SVN functionality.
2. Bundle EasySVN with TSVN in a new installer, i.e. treat EasySVN
as an extension to TSVN. Each user will have exposure to the full
SVN functionality.
Besides not offering an "easy only" package, we would need to
release whenever TSVN does, maintain a fork of the installer
scripts and there may be issue with users updating TSVN via
the original installer.
3. Make EasySVN a part / "operation mode" of TSVN. However, this
would make it harder to develop a consistent usability concept and
to maintain a portable core.
This option may become more compelling once EasySVN covers
more of SVN's functional spectrum.
SUGGESTION
Because EasySVN and TSVN will have separate update cycles, the first
option appears to be the most practical one.
EasySVN currently only provides update and commit functionality.
New files will be added automatically and missing ones be deleted.
So, we rely on "some other" SVN client to at least do the initial
checkout. Inspecting and reverting changes, specific conflict
resolution and other SVN functionality will also require a tool
like TortoiseSVN.
EasySVN will give the option to use TSVN dialogs instead of the
built-in ones but this is purely optional. Because EasySVN is
still minimalistic, most users will install TSVN as well. That is
an inconvenience.
STRATEGIC OPTIONS
1. Keep EasySVN a completely separate tool that is good neighbours
(don't interfere and prevent interference from others) with other SVN
clients on the same computer.
To be viable as an independent client, we need a check-out function.
Future releases will focus on providing smart / automatic usage of
further SVN functionality.
2. Bundle EasySVN with TSVN in a new installer, i.e. treat EasySVN
as an extension to TSVN. Each user will have exposure to the full
SVN functionality.
Besides not offering an "easy only" package, we would need to
release whenever TSVN does, maintain a fork of the installer
scripts and there may be issue with users updating TSVN via
the original installer.
3. Make EasySVN a part / "operation mode" of TSVN. However, this
would make it harder to develop a consistent usability concept and
to maintain a portable core.
This option may become more compelling once EasySVN covers
more of SVN's functional spectrum.
SUGGESTION
Because EasySVN and TSVN will have separate update cycles, the first
option appears to be the most practical one.
Home / Developer API / Tour / Get a Project - Solutions for Bug & Issue Tracking, Collaboration Tools, Subversion Hosting, Git Hosting
Easysvn tortoise is powered by Assembla.
2 Comments
By Andy Singleton on 2011-12-05 12:18
1) Adding EasySVN to Tortoise. Is it hard to maintain our own tortoise distribution?
2) adding checkout to EasySVN?
By stefan.fuhrmann.1974 on 2011-12-07 12:29
There are two aspects: (A) maintenance effort and (B) flexibility.
(A) is simple: SVN / TSVN releases about every other month and a build would take 5 .. 10h on our side. I.e. 50h/year
(B) is more tricky: we can't release more often than TSVN does without running into subtle versioning / updating issues
So, we could only release within a short window after the TSVN release.
Option 2)
We need c/o already for "Share with Assembla" and even the UI is similar. Estimated effort for a simple c/o dialog: 10h.
Benefit: we can automatically activate EasySVN on the new working copy. Maintenance should not be an issue as
the difficult parts (detecting various error scenarios) are handled by the SVN libs.