I noticed that Eclipse (Flex Builder) generates hundreds of metadata files. Should I check them into my source control? They seem necessary, because if I delete them Flex Builder just opens up an empty workbench...
Some of these files plainly do not belong in source control (like .history files and some cache files). If I delete them my project opens up again without a hitch. But the list is long and there seem to be no clear separation between folders that contain files that belong in source control and those that do not.
I can't just shove them all into svn, even if I were to ignore the inefficiency, because Eclipse generates new ones constantly, with different names, which in turn also seem to be crucial for the project to load.
Can someone please enlighten me?
Don't check in the hundreds of metadata files. If you want to be able to check out the project in a way that it can just be imported, then check in:
.actionScriptProperties
.project
.flexProperties
And "html-template" and "libs". As Christian says, any resources you depend on. I usually keep those as separate Flex Library projects though.
I generally put all of my source code under src, and I check in src and all of its descendents. If my project relies on any external dependencies (e.g., the Cairngorm SWC, as3corelib, etc.), Flash/graphical assets, stylesheets, or resource files, I check those in, too. But I don't check in any generated (bin-*), intermediate or IDE-specific stuff, because having that stuff in source control doesn't seem to provide much practical benefit, and in my experience has only caused me headaches; in general, I check in the most minimal set of whatever I'd need -- given a clean FlexBuilder installation (or none at all -- for example, if I were compiling instead with mxmlc or compc) and an empty project -- to build the project successfully.
Most of the eclipse project files, like .project, .properties, everything in .settings, can go into your source control. As long as the files don't have user-dependent settings like file paths or local urls, you should be fine.
One method we use is creating local property files that don't get used in SCM, but are included in the ones that do. I.E an ant build file including a local.properties file which has local metadata.
What if the .actionScriptProperties, .project, or .flexProperties have user-dependent stuff in them? Typically this will be url or path information. What's the best practice way of externalizing this? I tried creating path variables, but this only works obviously for paths. Not for things like hostname, etc.
Related
In a LabVIEW project, when should I use virtual folder and when should I use auto-populated folder? Why?
You don't have to use either. Your project could just have a main VI and have everything else handled automatically as a dependency.
Personally, I would suggest viewing the project window as a logical organization tool for your work and say that you should only put the things you actually need or want to access from there.
The conclusion from this is that you should generally not use auto-pop folders, as you don't need that. If you want to see the disk hierarchy, you can go to the files tab in the project window.
You can use virtual folders for your logical organization. For example, you might want to have support files for your builds (like an icon for the EXE) and putting those in a folder cleans up the project. Another example might be that you have a library (like a class) and you want to group subitems in that library into some logical groups. You can create virtual folders inside that library.
The one place where I do use auto-pop. folders is if I have some dynamically loaded VIs or another list of files which are placed in the same folder. Adding that folder to the project as auto-pop allows it to be handled cleanly.
It is your choice. How do you want to manage your files?
For myself, the answer is “never ever use auto-populating folders.” Those folders do not play well with libraries or classes (by design, not because of a bug), and they make it hard to remove items from a project but keep the files around (because deleting from the folder is automatically deleting from disk). There are plenty of others who agree with me. But they are nice for simple apps that don’t use any modern software design tools.
I want to get a path to the project directory in Qt and reference the other files of my project relative to it. I know this issue have been already discussed here
Get current working directory in a Qt application
and here
How to get current working directory path of a Qt application?
but the answer is still unknown. In case it's impossible to get such a path then what is the approach of navigation among files of the Qt project.
Based on your comment, you are trying to:
Access some images which are being used in my program. I could of course put them into build target directory, but it becomes uncomfortable to pass my code to others.
The approach to store resource files in the project source directory and rely on such structure at runtime is not a greatest idea. I can't imagine the situation when mixing the concepts of initially decoupled source and build directories could be useful, correct me if I'm wrong.
So, according to your needs:
The most simple and plain way is to use the Qt resource system. The resource files are simply embedded into the executable, so there will be no need to access the file system.
Another way is the automatic deployment of the needed files. This answer describes the way to copy your files to the target directory using qmake.
In my Qt application we can open a help file (chm) by doing the following:
QDesktopServices::openUrl(QUrl::fromLocalFile(_PathToTheCHMFile));
This seems to be the suggested way of doing things. And it has worked up until now.
However, the documentation team has now changed how the chm files work. Now we are referencing a "master" file which only contains references to other chm files. The directory structure of the chm files is as follows:
master.chm
SUBDIR/
-> child1.chm
-> child2.chm
...
If open the master.chm file with hh.exe (the default tool in windows), everything looks perfect. However, from my Qt application, the help file opens, but there are no sub topics, just the root node.
I assume this is a search path issue, and it can't resolve the relative paths. There doesn't seem to be any way to configure the openURL call to run from a certain directory, or anything like that.
Thanks in advance
If you need to be able to access those elements properly, then you may need to change your applications current directory on the fly.
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qdir.html#details
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qdir.html#setCurrent
If that doesn't work, you may want to look into using QProcess::startDetached
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qprocess.html#startDetached
and specifying the working directory to be exactly where your master.chm is located.
You may want to specify some command-line arguments, too.
http://www.help-info.de/en/Help_Info_HTMLHelp/hh_command.htm
Hope that helps.
When setting up a source control repository for a Flex Builder workspace, what do you consider to be worth checking in? Do you exclude the workspace .metadata folder but keep the .project and other project specific files? Keep both? Throw away both? Is there a guideline you use to decide which is worth holding onto or do you do it out of practical experience?
We check in the source files but not the binaries or settings files (e.g., .actionScriptProperties, .flexLibProperties, nothing in bin-debug, nothing in target directory). We build and deploy with Maven.
I check in the source directoy and the binary directory; nothing else. I set up my Flex Builder project to use a linked directory as my primary source; which keeps the code and repository independent of any project specific settings.
I have known people who check in all the project files. This makes it relatively easy to check out and then set up a new project; as you can import the project folder very easily into Flex Builder.
I can't say one is better than the other, though. It depends what you want to do.
I'm using Perforce, if that changes the tune of the answers at all.
I'd like to implement a build process that, when a solution is built in a "release" mode, tags the entire source tree with a label and pushes the output of the build (DLLs, webpages) to a /build/release directory in source control. This directory should always contain the latest complete build, nothing less and nothing more, so I can yank that directory to production servers in its entirety and it's ready to go.
Now say I had a DLL in a previous release that the new build is not supposed to include. Does this mean the best practice for updating that /build/release folder is to check the entire thing out, delete everything in it, add the new build files, and sync it? Sounds like an obvious answer, but I want to make sure I'm not missing some other voodoo that might be a better way to do it.
I think you are missing the simple voodoo:) You should consider just using a plain old file system for your build drops. Source control is designed to manage change, versioning, and collaboration and there really is no need for any of this related to builds. The whole point to an build system is to be able to reproduce the source code and create the application at a moments notice so I would focus on being able to do that more than relying on the permanent storage of the output files. Be sure to back up the build drop folder structure just as you would the source control database. Use a folder naming scheme that includes the build number in the filename. I would store all of the builds (back at least several) because there are times when QA wants to restore an old build to test in order to compare features or resurrect a bug. Using this system every build gets a new folder so you don';t have to worry about deleting out old files.
I'd say "Yes" - you should to start with a blank folder structure for your builds (regardless of source control system).