Anyone Using Git (Scm) For Ca Project File Management?

[Barton_Brown]

Recently, Todd (4hotshoez) posted a question about file management on a network. Doug Park responded with pointers to two tools, one was git. After spending yesterday afternoon exploring Git, I am wondering if there is anyone using this tool for CA file management? 

 

While the primary target audience of Git is software development teams, it appears it could be used for CA team development projects (or even for individual users wanting better control of their development process).

 

What I am curious about is whether using this type of tool falls into the 'misapplication of tool' category or just that one would be using a small subset of the designed capabilities since CA projects don't tend to easily fit into code branching and merging scenarios :-).

[jcaffee]

GIT and GITHUB have workflows designed for the software development crowd.  An AEC SharePoint solution however...

 

http://www.gig-werks.com/Pages/SharePoint_Solutions_for_the_AEC_Architecture_Engineering_Construction.aspx

 

Google "SharePoint AEC solutions," and you'll get a few dozen options  (or ideas on how you can implement your own)

 

jon

[Barton_Brown]

Jon, thanks for the pointer to AEC SharePoint possibilities. 

 

I am generally familiar with SharePoint. In my previous work life as a engineering manager at a Fortune 20 electronics company, one of my avocations was evangelizing about how SharePoint could help us with program management. This was in the early days of SharePoint (around the time Gig-werks was formed). I went so far as to set up my own servers, install SharePoint, and create some program sites. About six-months later corporate IT shut me down because they were creating their own SharePoint farm for the corporation - good for them.

 

In my Google search I found the following blog entry: http://aeccloud.com/sharepoint-clearly-the-answer-to-everything-sort-of/ where he did an excellent job describing what SharePoint is and is not. It was a good refresher read for me and was good background as I investigated what appears to the be the leader in AEC SharePoint solutions - the Gig-werks company you referenced. A large portion of the Gig-werks solution would apply to a lot of different industries - appeared to be a good project/program management tool. However, what caught my attention was the statement made in one of the YouTube presentations that their target audience was 100 seats to 3,000 seats. Their solution included some LOB (line of business) solutions provided by ISVs (independent software vendors) that would seem to require a fairly large capital investment in software, and that could only be recovered by a lot of users - and thus only affordable by a large AEC company. I would love to play with their solution but it looked like overkill for small shops and completely out of the question for 1 person shops.

 

The Gig-Werks solution looked wonderful but I'm not looking for a complete program management workflow solution, I'm mostly interested in just the file management aspect that can be provided by an SCM, if it is inexpensive and 'light weight'. While I'm looking, I guess I'll continue to rely on copied files and Dropbox...

[KirkClemons]

I've used GIT for my web projects. It works well for tracking individual changes to code which is what it's really tailored for. But it also works well for images and other misc., non-text, file types. So I would imagine that it should be able to handle a plan file without a problem.

[Barton_Brown]

Thanks Kirk, exactly the response I was hoping to read.

 

A couple of additional questions: 

1) what git server do you use (a cloud service or did you set up your own server)?

2) what GUI (if any) do you prefer?

 

Thank you!

[KirkClemons]

1) I use bitbucket.org as my repository host.

 

2) They have their own client program that you can download and install, personally I do my web work on a linux machine so I use the command line version of GIT.

[Barton_Brown]

 

2) They have their own client program that you can download and install, personally I do my web work on a linux machine so I use the command line version of GIT.

Kirk, Thank you.

 

Hardcore I see 

[Barton_Brown]

The conclusion I am about to write will seem obvious to most, but I was curious about the present state of DVCS (distributed version control systems) and who knows, I might want to write some code again...

I'm posting this mostly for completeness in case someone else was curious.

I spent some time today exploring bitbucket.org, getting an account, installing git, and running through the basic tutorial. If I were a software developer or web developer, this looks like a great solution (especially the cost of 'free' for 5 or less collaborators).

However, in the FAQ section, I found this:

Have a lot of binaries such as images or sounds?
Keep in mind Bitbucket is a code hosting service not a file sharing service. If a lot of your files are extremely large or if your files are binaries or executables, you should understand Git or Mercurial will not work well with them. You'll find that even locally your repository is barely usable. Moreover, Bitbucket can't display diffs on binaries.
For binary or executable storage, we recommend you look into file hosting services such as DropBox, rsync, rsnapshot, rdiff-backup, and so forth. Still not sure what to do? Review this post on stackoverflow for more ideas.

 

In other places they said small binaries are OK but obviously, the real purpose of bitbucket/git is version control of code. The only purpose of putting binaries, such as a .plan file into the system would be to document each version of the plan.

 

At this point, I'm feeling that the extra overhead of checkout/committing seems much greater than just making a date-stamped version of a plan file (like CA does for archive files) when necessary, write a small text file noting the state of the plan/layout file and storing everything in Dropbox. This doesn't solve the sharing/file locking issue for multi-user offices, but will work well for me since this has been my approach all along (except for the recent addition of Dropbox as a store/sync service).

[jcaffee]

And again, I'm back to a SharePoint Online account.  SP can be implemented simply, if you choose to do so, within Office 365/OneDrive.  Do some research on the MS website re: SharePoint Online for small/medium business.

 

jon

[Barton_Brown]

Hi Jon,

 

From your posts, you are clearly a SharePoint advocate. I'm struggling to see how a generic SharePoint solution will help. Let's assume that I decided to get an Office365/OneDrive/Sharepoint subscription, then what? OOTB, I think that SharePoint doesn't really do much except provide a collaborative web front-end with maybe the ability to create workflows (see my reference above to the aeccloud blog post) - This is based on my admittedly dated familiarity with SharePoint. If you are using a SharePoint solution, please elaborate/enlighten me about how it is helping you. What are the issues that a SP solution solves and how much effort is required to create this solution? 

 

One limitation I have found, at least from my perspective is the OneDrive storage. I used OneDrive for a while as my 'file store/sync source' for CA plans between computers but found the sync latency to be long, especially for large files such as the User_Library.calib because OneDrive is a 'dumb sync' and pushes an entire file when a change occurs. I switched to Dropbox because of its 'smart sync' where only the changed portions of a large file are pushed over the internet. Dropbox provided a huge performance improvement.

 

Thank you for any insights you have time to provide. 

[jcaffee]

Simple (this concept is relative to skillset) OOB, library check-in, check-out functionality in SharePoint...

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/set-up-a-library-to-require-check-out-of-files-HA103455685.aspx?CTT=1

 

Barton, I do like SharePoint.  First and foremost, it is a robust, mature doc management and collaboration framework.  But (and this is a big but), it can get unwieldy very, very quickly if the implementer doesn't know/understand what they're doing.  It is definitely a RTFM-before-making-a-single-keystroke type of solution.

 

As for file updates in OneDrive; it's user configurable for incremental vs. batch.  Both have their benefits and detractors.  Where DropBox excels for the individual, with rapid multi-device syncing and simple sharing, the triumvirate of Office 365/SharePoint Online/OneDrive is just heads-and-shoulders above for collaboration with complex sharing (multi-organizational), permissions and full library features.

 

Like I said, do your research.

 

Bon Dia,

jon

 

BTW: my avatar pic was taken on the old dock @ Sand Dollar about 20 yrs ago.  (I miss the old Green Parrot!)

[Barton_Brown]

the triumvirate of Office 365/SharePoint Online/OneDrive is just heads-and-shoulders above for collaboration with complex sharing (multi-organizational), permissions and full library features.

 

Like I said, do your research.

 

Bon Dia,

jon

 

BTW: my avatar pic was taken on the old dock @ Sand Dollar about 20 yrs ago.  (I miss the old Green Parrot!)

Bon tardes Jon,

 

I'm not anti-SharePoint at all - as I mentioned earlier I used to be a mini-evangelist for it within the 'large organization' environment where I worked. I highlighted your comment above where I agree that it would/does definitely shine. Your link also helped highlight present OOB functionality.

 

Regarding research: it is ongoing, and that includes asking evangelists why they prefer the solution they are evangelizing.   

 

If I were more than a part-time, one-man-band, I would seriously consider a SharePoint solution. Hopefully this discussion will get the thought wheels turning for others that do have significant collaboration needs. Thank you for taking the time to share.

 

[off topic] Have you been to Bonaire recently? Significant change has occurred over the last 20 years, as with every place. We now do the snow-bird thing - spend the Fall/Winter/part of Spring on Bonaire and the Spring/Summer in Oregon. Works for us! 

[Doug_Park]

I'm not an advocate of any particular software in this area. Only that something seems necessary to me. But that is probably due to my background where I've seen the benefits of this over and over.

 

In any case a manual method can work, but requires discipline. The software also requires some discipline, but if others are using it they tend to help build the discipline. But at least one person in the office needs to be continually pushing for whatever process you have to be followed.