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Auto refresh


Soho

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In February you wrote in a forum thread:

I've good news here: we're going to implement this during the current sprint, so expect it to be out in a couple of weeks.

I can't find that feature in the current version. Has it been implemented yet. I really miss an auto refresh feature whenever I bring a view into focus. It is quite easy to forget and I can hardly think of any scenario where I want to view a non-refreshed view.

A little caption with the last refresh time would also be nice.

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Soho,

Could you please let us know in which thread did we say that we were going to implement "auto-refresh"??? It would be useful to know the context.

That being said, as 'product owner' I can tell you that "autorefresh" is not on my list for a reason: in really big projects with, let's say, 100 or 200 or 300 developers, the autorefresh op would be putting the server under big stress for almost no reason... also killing the network traffic and so on... so I don't think is a very good idea.

I use (obviously) the GUI on a daily basis... which view do you miss to be autorefreshed? Because I do it manually and it is far from being painful... :)

Thanks,

pablo

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Could you please let us know in which thread did we say that we were going to implement "auto-refresh"??? It would be useful to know the context.

Old thread

That being said' date=' as 'product owner' I can tell you that "autorefresh" is not on my list for a reason: in really big projects with, let's say, 100 or 200 or 300 developers, the autorefresh op would be putting the server under big stress for almost no reason... also killing the network traffic and so on... so I don't think is a very good idea.

[/quote']

The obvious solution is to make auto refreshing optional, but some optimization must be possible to reduce the overhead of checking for changes to a view.

I use (obviously) the GUI on a daily basis... which view do you miss to be autorefreshed? Because I do it manually and it is far from being painful... :)

Mainly pending changes. A view where refreshing should also have no or little impact on network performance and where missing items could have unforeseen consequences. It would be nice in the other views also. It should be quite trivial to implement a refresh when a view receives focus and an option for auto refreshing.

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Here is a fresh situation where not having auto refresh caused a lot of problems and cleanup.

I tried to merge some changes from one branch to a main branch. In the top work space bar in the GUI I could see, that my active branch was in fact the /main branch.

I gladly began to merge an ran into a lot of unexpected conflicts, which took some time to resolve. After I committed my merge changes I notices that the branch explorer showed a merge arrow pointing between the merge source branch and a difference branch than the main branch. The reason for this was that I didn't click refresh on the active workspace top bar, so it didn't show the branch I was in fact working on.

This is just an example of daily frustrations we experience with not having a current picture of what we are working with. It can't be network performance issue to display the correct branch you are working with.

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Hi Soho,

Thanks for the details.

One question though: how did you end up with an outdated info on the GUI?? I mean, did you switch branch from the GUI? If so, it would be updated, so I guess you updated your workspace from some other place, didn't you? Please let me know since it seems you're using a different workflow from what I'm used to.

Mine (which is just one option) is:

- I do use the GUI to create branch and switch to it

- I work on VStudio, no plugin (my choice)

- I do "find changes" from the GUI. Click on refresh, find changes, checkin. (it is much better in 4.0 than it used to be in 3.0, but I used the same on 3.0, to be honest). Reason not to make it autorefreshed: it could kill the disk. But it could be optional to "refresh on activate". To be honest I don't miss it, but I also press CTRL-S myself once every 5 secs in VStudio so...

Using this workflow the GUI info is never outdated.

In general, I'd say that "knowing the branch you're working on" is much more than checking what's on the GUI top panel... is about really knowing where you are, so, well, plastic must help but working in a wrong branch probably means the workflow is not correctly set up or is not as comfortable or well understood as it should be...

Please share your workflow so I can gain a better understanding.

Thanks,

pablo

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The problem probably is that I do use the VS2010 plugin. In the concrete case I don't know what happened. Perhaps I opened the branch explorer view from the plugin and changed workspace, which would explain why the standalone application was not updated.

I do like to have an integrated version control with VS2010, so I would prefer to have a plugin, but we have had numerous bad experiences with the plugin (a topic of it's own), which is why we also run the standalone GUI. And when they don't autorefresh, things can get out of sync.

My normal workflow is:

Repeat:

Do some work in VS.

Right-click the solution in the solution explorer and check in.

Eventually switch to the stand alone gui and do some branching / merging:

Open the branch explorer view.

Switch to the branch I want to merge changes to.

Merge from my previous branch.

Switch to VS.

Choose plastic scm refresh.

Close solution, Open solution, Clean Solution, Build solution

(I would prefer just building but VS doesn't always detect all changes when switching workspace with

an open solution. Could be a file timestamp thing).

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Hi Soho,

> The problem probably is that

> I do use the VS2010 plugin.

> In the concrete case I don't

> know what happened. Perhaps

> I opened the branch explorer

> view from the plugin and changed

> workspace, which would explain

> why the standalone application

> was not updated.

Ok, yes, if you switched branch from the VSPackage the GUI won't notice it until you get it refreshed. Something to improve as you suggested.

> I do like to have an integrated

> version control with VS2010, so

> I would prefer to have a plugin,

> but we have had numerous bad

> experiences with the plugin

> (a topic of it's own),

Well, can you elaborate more on this? If you tell us then we'll be able to improve! :)

> which is why we also run the

> standalone GUI. And when they

> don't autorefresh, things can

> get out of sync.

Yes, I guess you're using a workflow we never really think of.

> My normal workflow is:

> Repeat:

> Do some work in VS.

> Right-click the solution

> in the solution explorer

> and check in.

We normally do "view\pending changes".

> Eventually switch to the

> stand alone gui and do

> some branching / merging:

> Open the branch explorer view.

> Switch to the branch I want

> to merge changes to.

> Merge from my previous branch.

Merge from your previous branch??? Why do you do that?? Why don't you keep branches independent?

> Switch to VS.

> Choose plastic scm refresh.

> Close solution, Open solution, Clean Solution, Build solution

Ok, if you're going to open/close solution... don't do plastic scm refresh before. Simply reopen and you're done. I normally reopen vstudio myself.

BTW, you could do the entire workflow (even merging and everything) within the VSPackage... why don't you try that??

Thanks,

pablo

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