MKS cleaning projects of not useful files - mks

I am using MKS on mi work daily, and I work with a very big repository thata contains a lot of projects, with a very colorful structure. On my department, we want to improve this project erasing all the optional files (.suo, .pdb, .txt, bin folders, obj folders, and more).
I know, that I can configure the files/folders that I want that the MKS ignore
it is explained here(MKS/ PTC Integrity Source equivalent to svn:ignore)
but,
is there any way to make a selective erase of all these kind of files without having to check out all the files, deleting all the files I want to, and check in again these changes?

(Disclosure: I am a PTC employee who works in Integrity Support)
To erase those files, you should just drop them. It is possible that you do not have drop permissions, in which case you will either need to get someone who does have those permissions to perform the drop, or have the permission to do so added to your permission set.
Assuming you have permission, you can select the members you wish to drop, and perform one of the following gestures:
From the menu: Member->Drop
From the context menu: Drop Members
From the keyboard: [Delete]
The members will still exist in the archive, but will no longer be visible in your repository.

You could create a scoped sandbox with specified filter. See http://communities.ptc.com/message/227385#227385.

Related

Organizing common files in a separate area in depot

Typically, we have a depot root for every different product that we work on. For e.g.:
//products/productX
/productY
As the common files in the 2 products increase, I would like to put them into a top level folder of it's own
//products/productX
/productY
/common
Now to ensure that this works for all the users who have existing workspace, we would need to update all their workspaces. Is there an alternative? Can we put some markers in the depot to create a link it to a different folder? Any other option?
What you're describing is essentially the reason that streams were created -- the idea of a stream is that you definition the structure of a codeline in one place (e.g. "product X lives in //products/productX"), multiple people base their workspaces on that, and when you change it (e.g. "product X lives in //products/productX + //products/common), every workspace based on that definition updates automatically.
So if you're using streams, all you need to do is update the stream definitions that need to include the new //products/common directory. Easy!
If you're using "classic" workspaces, users who are using the default //products/... mapping will get the common directory automatically regardless. For users with custom views, my suggestion would be to alert them of the refactor and then let them make their own adjustments as appropriate; if they're familiar enough with Perforce to have built a custom client view, they may not appreciate having it changed underneath them.

File Attachment inside P4 Changelists

I'm looking for a way to embed file attachments (like screenshots) inside a Perforce changelist. I'm hoping (but not optimistic) that there's a way inside P4 to actually do this, possibly via a plugin.
If not, I'll either have to look into writing a plugin myself (any pointers?), or I have to cook up a wrapper for P4 checkins that also uploads/submits the attachment, then links that attachment to the CL via an identifier inside the CL. (And then I need a tool to correlate and display both).
To add a bit more information: I'm interfacing with the P4 server via a P4API bot that I'm writing. That bots crawls over every checkin and harvests the data it gets to generate reports. I.e. it correlates submissions with the actual feature spec that informed the task, generates a history of progress for that task etc. Within that context, attaching additional meta data to a CL (like a screenshot) is useful because those attachments can then be used in the data mining - they can enhance the reports that I'm generating.
I can guard against bad/rampant metadata attachments via a wrapper program that is used to make 95% of all our P4 submissions, anyway (it has its own dialog). But I gotta figure out how to present all the data inside P4 when the P4 CL spec only seems to have text available.
I don't think there is any (easy) way to do what you're requesting. A changelist is "an atomic change transaction". There is very little meta-data with them. The P4 command reference for p4 change lists everything you're allowed to do, and adding an arbitrary attachment isn't there.
You could always open a feature request in the Perforce forums.
In Response to Edits
It looks like this is actually just one instance of a larger problem you're facing: managing meta-data around your depot's projects and its changelists. I would suggest you use this requirement as a driving force behind making some larger process changes at your organization. If you have a lot of data being generated based on automated analysis of your projects, it would be better to create a proper database to organize it all. Your submission wrapper could handle putting screenshots (or any other meta data) in a database and annotating the change list description with tags that indicate where to find attachments in the database.
A comprehensive database solution would allow you to associate attachments, changelists and other data with each other and other project resources in a more organized fashion than you currently have.
Original Response
If you decide to write a plugin to handle just this task without a database, my suggested approach would be the following:
Designate a shared network drive or directory that is accessible to all team members as the "perforce attachment dump". Users should have write access to this area.
Use the changelist description field to create a tag to name a file that should be attached. For example, "Attach: file_name.jpg".
Your users use the plugin to navigate to the file(s) locally and the plugin will copy it to the dump drive and add the tag to the description. The plugin should enforce some naming scheme to make the files easy to find. Perhaps append the changelist number to the file base name? Or create a folder for each changelist?
Use a server side pre-submit trigger and script to scan submitted changelist descriptions for tags and retrieve this file from the attachment dump. It should probably reject changelists with the tag if it can't find the file.
The server side script should move the file to a share drive that is read-only to users. This is so that if you want to look at an attachment for a changelist that is five months old, you can be sure it will still be available.
Give your plugin the ability to open the attachments on the read-only share drive from your developer's local machines, from within P4 and P4V.

Installshield Installscript properties

We have Installshield 2009 for our product. I am trying to muddle my way through it to make some updates (obviously, I am not the original author).
Within, there is a fairly complex arrangement of components and files, plus, there is a script section for some custom work.
I need to accomplish the following, without creating a blank object in the repository.
One of the components needs to create a directory tree (two folders deep).
Within that tree (deepest folder), I need to create a blank file.
Questions:
Do I need to create two components, one for each directory level, or will the tree be created if I specify [INSTALLDIR]folder1\folder2?
I am thinking that the installscript would be the place to create the empty file, based on the CreateFile example in the help. I notice that, in the components page, that, once I typed the value for the Destination property, that a little "tag" of sorts appeared at the start {FOLDER2}. Can I used that tag as an argument to CreateFile and how would I reference it?
Regardless of the project type, I would probably suggest creating the folder structure in the Files and Folders view, and adding the empty file there. It's just simple and you'd be done with fewer chances of error.
As to the questions you asked, neither Basic MSI nor InstallScript projects require components for every folder level on the system. Note that if the folder isn't already there when it executes, the CreateFile approach is unlikely to create the folders for you.
In a Basic MSI project, {FOLDER2} indicates that FOLDER2 is the name of the directory entry, and after CostFinalize there will be a property of the same name that contains its run-time location. You can retrieve it in an InstallScript custom action with MsiGetProperty. In a pure InstallScript project the approach would be a little different, worst case it would be something like TARGETDIR ^ "folder1" ^ "folder2" (my InstallScript is rusty).

Merge two folders in Lotus Notes 8.5.3

I have a user who has got two folders called "CLIENTS" and "CLIENTS2". Now, I need to merge those two folers into a single one but cannot do that manually since there are hundreds of sub folders which would take forever to be moved. Is there any way I can do that by script? Thank you.
In Notes, subfolders aren't really "inside" of each other. I.e., if you see A folder XXX, with a subfolder YYY, what you really have is a folder named "XXX", and another folder named "XXX\YYY". So all you need to do to "merge" the subfolders is to open Domino Designer, open the user's mailbox, open the Folders, and then rename everything that starts with "CLIENTS2" so that they start with "CLIENTS" instead.
If you do that, then all you have to worry about is moving the documents from the top level folder the Notes client, and it's all done.
The answer to your question, though, is yes it can be done by scripting. I'd start with the NotesNoteCollection class and go from there. But since you are dealing with one user, I suspect the manual technique described above will be considerably faster.

how to add directory to SupportFiles in InstallShield

Is there a possibility to add directory (with sub directories) to SupportFiles section in installshield. I have dynamically created content (list of files changes constantly) that I use to support my installation.
Is there any other method to add dynamically whole directory to installation package. I need files from this directory only during installation process. At the end of the installation I want IS to remove these files automatically ?
The ISSetupFile table ( which drives the Support Files pattern ) only supports extracting files to a single directory. There is no way in the UI to tell it to be dynamic although you could have a build automation step that reflects the contents of a directory and wires it up to the table using the automation interface. This still couldn't do sub directories though.
What you probably want to do is creating a self-extracting zip of the files you need as part of your build and add that EXE to Support Files. Then write custom actions that call the EXE to extract the payload to Support Files and another CA to clean it up. Look for the custom action ISSetupFilesExtract and ISSetupFilesCleanup to figure out the best way to do this.
Although I'm late to the party: #BuvinJ mentioned in a comment that you can add directories to "Advanced Files" under "Disk1." In this case, they do appear in the temporary directory (support directory), eg. SUPPORTDIR\Disk1
SUPPORTDIR is a temporary location where the installer dumps files, and cleans them up afterward. An example is C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\Temp\2\{F6B9B2D6-2A5A-4146-9297-E80A199CB0CB}.
This could be a quicker/cheaper/faster solution to writing custom actions and/or packaging up files by hand in, say, a self-extracting zip file.

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