Question

I have posted a question before, Moving away from VSS, in which I asked about the best VCS control for Delphi developers who were using VSS. Most developers seem to use svn with TortoiseSVN. I tried this for few days and I think it’s the best route to go with.

However, I still have some confusion about the way that svn works so here are a few questions that I’d like answered:

1. Can I work with old lock way(checkout-modify-checkin) that vss uses?

2. Delphi forms have two files (MyForm.pas, MyForm.dfm). When I add any control to the form, both files will be modified so I want to commit ‘myform.pas’ and have ‘myform.dfm’ commit with it too. Am I missing anything here?

3. The same applies for the Delphi Project file. Because this links with other files, all of them should be committed when I change the project file.

4. What files do you have marked to be ignored in TSVN, so TSVN will not look for these files like (.dcu,.exe, …), and can I export it from one Pc to other?

I now have to change the way I’m thinking in vss style, and need to change it for SVN style, but with vss, all things were managed within the IDE, which was fantastic ;-).

UPDATE:

5.If I commit the Delphi form(.pas & dfm) and found some one already updated the version before, how do you resolve the conflict if there some new controls and events added to that form and unit(this require Delphi developer with svn).

Answer 1

1. Yes, you could still lock files, but it’s not recommended. You have to set the svn:needs-lock property on all the files you might want to lock so they get the readonly flag set when you check out. But again, that’s not the recommended work flow for text files. Just give the modify-merge work flow a try!
2. Since you’re using TortoiseSVN: right-click on your parent folder, choose ‘Commit’. In the commit dialog, you will see all files that need committing. Just check both the myform.pas and the myform.dfm file for the commit. All checked files will get committed together, no need (and definitely not recommended!) to commit each file individually!
3. See 2. – But you should read the wonderful Subversion book first to get familiar with the concept. You should always commit all files that belong to a logical change. For example, if you add new controls to your form and implement the code to handle it, you may have more than just the form files modified but several files more. Always commit all those files together since a commit is a logical entity.
4. You don’t have to ‘export’ ignore settings. Just add the svn:ignored property. That’s very easy to do with TortoiseSVN as explained in the docs.