Re: Subversion and RPG source change management

I am not sure I am looking to give up anything. What I would like is to take the existing source maintenance and compile tools in RDp and hook them up silently (if you want to call it that) to a source versioning system like SVN. The source is currently retrieved in RDp and is saved and compiled in RDp without loss of the changed date stamps, etc on the i. I would just like to be able to commit, from time to time, to the SVN repository so that I can more easily track what I did, as Nathan has said. I don't expect anything to be different at the RDp end, except a "Team" menu option when I right click and have the option to share and then commit, synchronize, etc. Now there could be an issue if I wanted to roll back some changes from SVN and in that case I guess the changed date stamps for the retrieved source would be lost but I gotta believe there is a solution for that. I have been trying to get Rational Team Concert up on my i, but WAS just flat won't install on my blade and I have been working with IBM support to sort the issue out. I want to see if the versioning in RTC can be any better than SVN. But, at this point, WAS is standing in my way.

Pete


On 5/23/2010 1:03 PM, Mark S. Waterbury wrote:

Everyone:

Consider what you "give up" if you abandon maintaining source code in
the OS/400 native format of source physical file members and switch to
solely using an open-source version control tool such as CVS, SVN, GIT,
etc. as the repository ("master copy") of all your source.

#1. you lose the ability to have changed date stamps on each line of
source code. This is not as much of a "big deal" as it once may have
been, since you can use tools such as "diff" that are built-into SVN,
etc., to see the differences between any two versions of source. Many
OS/400 or i5/OS developers are not used to these Unix style tools, and
are more familiar with looking at the source lines changed dates (e.g.
in SEU).

#2. you lose the member last changed date-time stamps -- in OS/400, each
source member has a create date and a last changed date. This "source
last changed date" is stored by the OS/400 compilers into the "OIR"
information for the object (*MODULE, *PGM, *SRVPGM, *FILE, *CMD,
*PNLGRP, *QMQRY, *QMFORM, etc.) so that you can easily determine the
exact "version" (based on date/time stamp) of what source member this
object was created from, independent of the object's create date/time
stamp. This has been one of the most important (and often overlooked)
features of the OS/400 platform, and AFAIK, no other platform has this
capability built-in. To simply dispense with this feature, solely for
the sake of being able to use an open source version control tool like
CVS or SVN, etc., is probably ill-advised. ("Just close your eyes and
step on the gas!") When you do a "get" from a CVS or SVN or GIT etc.
repository into a source physical file member, you end up with that
source member having today's date and time as the create date and the
last changed date, even when you are retrieving an older version of that
source member. For me, at least, this makes using CVS, SVN, GIT, etc.,
for "native" OS/400 source code a "non-starter."

#3. since V5R2, the ILE compilers allow to compile from source directly
in the IFS, rather than having to copy the source into a source physical
file member. But, if you do that, you also lose the OIR information
about the source file, library, member, and source changed date/time
stamp -- those fields will all be blank in the OIR for the *MODULE.

Why drag OS/400 down to the "lowest common denominator" level of OS
feature-set established by Unix and Linux? Just so you can use some
open-source "free" source code version control tool? :-o

SVN, CVS, and GIT, etc., are NOT "change management" tools -- they are
merely source code version control tools. And just because they may be
the "de facto" standard for open source projects in the Unix and Linux
world does not mean they are really all that wonderful; they are merely
adequate or better than anything else that is currently available (for
"free") in those environments.