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On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, MList -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com wrote:
> Would someone (or a few someones) please explain how they are
> using VSS (or ClearCase or...) for documentation production,
> as other than a backup utility?
Couple reasons:
1) A revision control system will tell you who is currently working on
something- who has the file 'checked out'.
2) Some revision control software is capable of diffing files against
each other (which is not the case with VSS and word .doc files, but is
the case with Word-generated HTML) two people can edit the same file at
the same time, and when they both check in, both of their changes will
appear in the new version.
3) Revision control software is capable of maintaining several different
revisions of the same file. At my job, we maintain three sets of code:
development, demo, and production. This means that you either have one set
of documentation that agrees with one of those at best, or three
mostly-identical versions of the same doc. With a revision control system,
you can 'pin' a certain revision of a file. Suppose the last stable
release of the code currently in production has a user manual that has
been edited and signed off, and that's version 1.25.3 from August of last
year. This isn't going to change much, unless new bugs or errors are
found. Meanwhile, the next software upgrade in beta is on the demo server,
and that manual includes a few changes and new features. That's version
1.27.2 from November. It's likely that some of those changes might get
tweaked again, and bugs and feature requests always happen in beta, so
that file is likely to change quite a bit. And while that's going on, the
next round of software upgrades is in development, and the manual will
need to reflect changes there as well. All three of these different
versions of the manual are mostly the same, and a typo in the first
version is probably in all three. With good revision control, you can fix
one or all three at the same time. It's a very handy thing when it works
right.
4) When the user says "It didn't look like this ~last~ year", you can pull
out last year's manual or last year's code or both and KILL THEM WITH-
...just kidding.
> For my purposes, it seems overkill -- I'm a lone writer --
> even though the company uses ClearCase for code projects.
Not necessarially, if you have to maintain different versions of the same
doc, or you want a historical record of how it changed over time, without
saving hundreds of different versions of the thing.
> What I need is a utility (Windoze) that does backups of
> specified watched folders/directories to a couple of places, and
> alternates the destinations.
> Or, maybe one that does local timed backups all day, and then does
> a backup to network at end of day?
You can also do this with VSS, but that's driving tacks with a post-hole
digger. There's two simpler ways to do this:
1) W2K and XP still have the same ability for batch files
that W3.x had. The handy command to do this is 'at'.
AT - Lists scheduled commands or schedules commands and programs to
run on a computer at a specified time and date. The Schedule service
must be running to use the at command.
usage: at [\\computername] time [/interactive] [/every:date[,...] |
/next:date[,...]] command
(from Windows Help in NT or W2K, look in the index for 'at command')
2) Alternatively, read the help files for 'Synchronization Manager' (W2K)
or 'Task Scheduler' (W98) or whatever they call it in whatever flavor of
windows you have.
--
Huey
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