How to Approach Personal & Cloud on Same PC

[M-Pixel]

Freeform Labs has been using Plastic Cloud for years now.  It's been great.  So great, that I'd like to use Plastic for some personal projects.

I could use my existing installation, taking care to replicate only between my computers (and not to the company cloud), but that still leaves me with commits labeled with my company account.  That's tolerable, but becomes undesirable should I ever want to graduate a personal project to OSS.

I got a Personal license already... But I don't know how to use it.  I can't install Personal edition alongside Cloud edition (I have the option to replace or cancel).

"Can't have multiple installations" is easily solved with a VM.  But VirtualBox + Windows + Plastic is too heavy to run on a laptop, and unnecessarily expensive.  So then there's Docker... But the Plastic installer doesn't work in Docker for Windows.  So, option 1 is to use Docker, but thay requires figuring out how to get it to install properly in that environment.

Option 2: I could use Linux containers, which don't have the installer problem because Codice has already QA'd Plastic in Linux Docker.  Ubuntu-on-Windows is heavier than Windows-on-Windows, though, and presents potential filesystem mapping issues.

Option 3: I could use Git as my backend, using Git Sync, and a username mapping rule to keep the company name out of the equation.  But Git Sync is S L O W compared to a simple replicate.  And what other features am I missing out on by passing the changesets through Git?  Surely something.

Finally, I could write some scripts that shut down Plastic Server, change the credentials, then re-start, whenever I want to switch between personal & company.  That sounds like far too much work, though, and wouldn't allow me to use both at once, so I'd hardly consider it a viable option.

... And that's all I could come up with.  So,

• Any other suggestions?  To any of the Codice staff, if you wanted to do a hobby project with Plastic, how would you approach this problem?
• If Docker sounds like an agreeable solution, could I get some help with the installer?  Or is there a way to get it in ZIP or MSI form instead?
• Or do you suggest I go with Git Sync after all?

[calbzam]

Hi,

I would use your current Plastic edtion installation. If I properly, understand it, your are using it for your work but you also want to create some local repos for personal projects.

Plastic cloud edition installs by default a local Plastic server (to host your local repos) and I would use this same local server for your personal projects.

By default, Plastic Cloud edition includes a Plastic license for 1 user (the local machine user). If I properly understand you don't want to use this same local user for your personal projects?

If you replace the default "plasticd.lic" by the Personal license, you will be able to re-configure your local server and create a custom user. But at the end of the day, your local server (doesn´t matter if using cloud edition or a Personal license) will only support one user. More than one user, requires a Team license.

As you mentioned, you can install a second server, using a docker container... but I think this complicates too much the setup.

http://blog.plasticscm.com/2015/01/plastic-meets-docker.html

I would use the same local user for my personal projects (local repos) in order to make the setup as simple as possible.

Regards,

Carlos.

[M-Pixel]

In that case, I'll still need a way to replicate from computer to computer (and, of course, replication package files are a bit too inconvenient for this purpose).  I looked into replicating directly between my laptop and desktop by opening port 8084, but it seems that the Cloud installation configures the server to only listen to localhost, and doesn't contain any of the server configuration utilities that I would need to change that.  Should I use the Personal Edition installer to get the more robust server features, and then log in with my Cloud credentials?

[calbzam]

If you use two server (for work and personal projects), you can replace the cloud edition license by your personal license. This way, you will be able to run the replica and configure both servers based on your needs.

The Plastic cloud edition license is designed only for hosting local repos and push/pull to the cloud. You cannot create new users or even run the web admin panel to configure the local server.

Regards,

Carlos.