Branch Explorer and Replication suggestions

[Misieq]

Hello

 

I am right now evaluating PlasticSCM (version 5.4)

 

During usage of the product I have found following suggestions:

 

1) It looks that Branch explorer is able to colour branches/changesets pulled from other server. I am right now trying to set-up work environment with one central server and local develpment servers. It would be good to direcly see which branches/changesets are present only locallu, which one are only on central server and which are sync.

There is ChangeSets colouring but:

- It is not possible to Show only remote changes (local source is always active) - it is hard to see which data were not pushed

- Remote server do not appear in "Change sets - Replication sources" if something was pushed to server but nothing was pulled from (to reproduce try to create new local repository do some changesets there and push branch to remote repo).

 

2) Replication window shall remember most frequently used IPs/ServerNames, or there shall be Setting to define list - right now it looks that it is remembered but per workspace/per repo (I am not sure which one, but for sure when I created new local repo with new local workspace and tried to push there was nothing in the list).

[manu]

Hi!

 

1) It looks that Branch explorer is able to colour branches/changesets pulled from other server. I am right now trying to set-up work environment with one central server and local develpment servers. It would be good to direcly see which branches/changesets are present only locallu, which one are only on central server and which are sync.

There is ChangeSets colouring but:

- It is not possible to Show only remote changes (local source is always active) - it is hard to see which data were not pushed

 

Regarding the first suggestion, using the sync view you can review what, the local repository is missing and what the central repository is missing, you can run remote diff operations and it's sorted by branch.

 

We tend to use the sync view because after reviewing the differences the next step is pushing/pulling them. 

 

Are you aware of the sync view? Maybe you are and you just want to see it also in a branch explorer diagram, if that's the case no problem, I'll share this with the team

 

- Remote server do not appear in "Change sets - Replication sources" if something was pushed to server but nothing was pulled from (to reproduce try to create new local repository do some changesets there and push branch to remote repo).

 

That one is already in our list. We'll try to have it soon.

 

2) Replication window shall remember most frequently used IPs/ServerNames, or there shall be Setting to define list - right now it looks that it is remembered but per workspace/per repo (I am not sure which one, but for sure when I created new local repo with new local workspace and tried to push there was nothing in the list).

 

I agree with you... we should implement that one. I'll share it with the team.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

[Misieq]

Thanks you for fast reply.

 

Regarding Sync view - I missed that one. It's definitely useful for complete repo synchonization or if we would like to search some "task" branches on remote served.

 

But definitly I think colours on Branch Explorer would be nice.

Especially it would be nice to set have priority of colours - right now if changeset is introduced in local served and pushed to remote one it will always be coloured as local one. My approach right now is to have central server serving as master and local servers serving as developers repos - right now it is not really seen on first look if everything what was planned to be pushed was pushed.

Another sugestion - allow to not show local repo data (right now checkbox is available only for remote replication source).

 

Sync View probably will show lots of branches pushed to server by other developers and also lots of developer local one which shall not be pushed - of course they can be always added for exclusion list but it also requires lots of clicks

[manu]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll share it with the team.

 

Double check the Sync View because it's really useful. Notice that a distributed developer will want to:

 

1) Push all the pending work to the central server -> Outgoing changes should be empty.

2) Pull important branches from the central server, that is the /main, /main/releaseX, /main/releaseY branches -> The incoming changes list will usually have a lot of branches not in sync (which is completely normal).

 

Pushing all the local branches can be done in a single click and for the pull operation you can use the filter to focus on the desired branches.

 

I feel that if you rely on the branch explorer to manually push and pull information you can easily forget branches because I assume you don't want to have an exactly mirror of the central repository, right?