Suggestions for Revisions

[jdegener]

I've installed the current TeamDrive 2.1 beta version and find it a very useful tool. However, the current state of revision control renders it pretty much unusable for working with any reasonable sized document.

Problems:
- too many revisions are generated - one every time a file is saved, which can be very often.
- there seems to be no limit to the number of revisions kept of each file.

I'm used to saving changes often while I'm editing a document. When I'm editing a word document of say 1 MB in size (which is not too extraordinary), and I save once every 2 minute, I would be generating 30 revisions in an hour of working, and all of them would be uploaded to my WebDAV space that will now fill up rapidly with lots of intermediate edits of my document that I'm not interested in at all.

My suggestion:
- allow setting a fixed number of revisions, deleting the oldest ones when more revisions are generated.
- add some intelligence in order to not collect each minor intermediate step of a document. e.g.
- Ideally: only generate a new revision when a file is no longer opened by an editing application (e.g. only when I close the word document)
- alternatively: only generate a new revision when the last revision is older than a certain threshold
- an OpenOffice integration could provide a button to explicitly generate an intermediate revision
- perhaps no new revisions should be generated at all when synchronization is disabled?

More comments/suggestions about the revision handling:
- when a new revision of a document is detected (by a more intelligent mechanism), prompt the user for a description that is stored as a comment to that revision (with the option to assign the same comment to all documents that are currently being revisioned, e.g. for the case of adding a bunch of new files etc.)
- allow deleting intermediate revisions.
- currently, reverting back to an older revision copies that old revision and makes it a new revision. I think this should only happen if I make a change to that older revision.
- It should be possible to diff any 2 selected revisions of a document. This internally would mean to download one (or more) previous revisions without overwriting the current revision on the local disk. Additionally, it would be great help if there was a direct diff integration into standard tools like OpenOffice or text diff tools. Imagine, you just select any 2 revisions of an .odt document for diffing (in TeamDrive UI.. or direct MS explorer integration such as explorer context menu), and OpenOffice starts and displays the diff between the 2 revisions. Another cool feature would be to trigger the diffing from an OpenOffice intergation. A good example is the OO integration of O3Spaces.

Keep up the good work! I'm really looking forward to any new versions of this promising tool!

[Patrik.Dusek]

Hi Jdegener,

thank you for your detailed post and your suggestions. In a later version we will support limited count
of versions and the deletion of versions.
TeamDrive normaly just creates a new version of a file when the editor has been closed. If this
is not the case, and as you wrote it looks like, it is a bug. We would be very interested which editor
you use to find out how to fix.

Best regards,
Patrik Dusek

[Schokobratel]

We would be very interested which editor
you use to find out how to fix.

Best regards,
Patrik Dusek

Same here, new copy every save.

Using Scite and Visual C# Express.

Regards,
S.Bratel

[Patrik.Dusek]

Hi Schokobratel,

we rely on the mechanism that if a file is opened in an editor we can't get an exclusive lock on the file.
In youre case the editor seems not to hold a handle on the file. There are two possible workarounds with
the current version:
- change, if possible the settings of the editor in having a lock on opened files
- stop teamdrive. After the startup TD scanns the spaces and will sync your changes as one version

We will offer some filters for later versions which will allow you to define the creation of versions.

Best regards,
Patrik Dusek

[Schokobratel]

Hi Schokobratel,

We will offer some filters for later versions which will allow you to define the creation of versions.

Best regards,
Patrik Dusek

Hi ,
thanks for you reply.
Personally for me it's ok, if TeamDrive saves a copy every save in Visual Studio, so i can use it as a version control.

An option to choose which way to go would be perfekt, though.

[volkeroboda]

To have an option would be the best idea.

Volker Oboda