>Hiya Hank,
>
>>>Hi all,
>>>
>>>Say, I'm looking for some "hands on" type advise.
>>>
>>>We have several 3rd party products we're planning on using in a re-write of an existing application. Products that we consider "best of breed", such as Web Connection, Stonefield Database Toolkit, Visual MaxFrame for starters. Add to that some ten years worth of procedural code that's going to be brought into the world of objects <g> and you can see we have our hands full.. <g>
>>>
>>>We are thinking that we could end up with something like 15-25 projects to begin with and with a large upside potential. The reason for this is that our product is tailored to a unique combination of State + County + Business Type + Specific Company + Specific User. That is, we could conceivably need to manage the "entity-specific" include files for a LOT of installations. Then there's the automatic data management system we need to build plus a whole host of support projects to help us manage all of this.. IOW, lots 'O projects. <g>
>>>
>>>As we would plan to subclass all the 3rd party stuff, VFP and so forth (to manage upgrades, etc) and we would also want to share as much common code between our various projects AND because VSS is a pain in the rear to manage multiple Shared directories (many of you do this out there and like it? <g>) we want to kee all common code in physical sub-directories of the various projects.
>>>
>>>There are some 3600 counties nation-wide. That's a lot of information to manage and that's why we want to plan this carefully.
>>>
>>>As you can no doubt imagine, this could get messy (but it's the best I've come up with) and I'm looking for ideas, particularly from any of you who have had to go down this path before and have "real life" type experiences.
>>>
>>>Got any? <s>
>>>
>>>Thanks a ton in advance!!!
>>
>>Hi Doug,
>>
>>You've got two problems. First is that you will outgrow VSS in no time at all: it gets really slow when you have large databases. (The good news is that there is a new version in the works, although details have not been released.) There are other, 3rd party Source Control systems, that use client-server backends; but I have found none whose SSAPI integration works with VFP (SourceOffSite, for off-site work, works, with a few quirks they haven't bothered to fix). That SSAPI integration in VFP is quirky is the other problem, because it limits your alternatives.
>
>Hmm... Let me ask a question to clear this up in my mind.. Are you referring to the VSS database here? Also, if I have, say 30 projects, are they all in one VSS database then?? I can live with the quirks.
>
>
>>
>>FWIW: I haven't found any problem with integrating 3rd-party stuff with VSS/SOS. It's very simple: everyone has the same directory structure, which is mimicked by the VSS project structure. Everything works seamlessly once you accept this constraint. The frame I use (Visual ProMatrix) has source control integration built into its IDE, which makes life even easier.
>
>Well, the "trick" in my mind was to place the 3rd party originals in a separate directory as there's no real need to keep a copy of them except for an occasionaly complete HD wipe. The subclasses and mods we make to those sc's is what I'm concerned about - Plus the concern that if I do get a whole lot of projects with a lot of VSS shares I'll get into trouble That was why I wanted to take the approach of having the PJX files "topmost" in a directory-structure sense. Less hassle it seems...
>
>>
>>Good luck,
>
>Thanks!
>
>>
>>Hank
>
>
>Say.. How long have we been chatting without ever meeting F2F?? 10 years now??

Hi Doug,

probably is 10 years now; I started following FoxPro when it was part of, I think, PCVENDB on Compuserve.

Ordinarily you would have all the projects in one VSS database; otherwise you can't keep everything that is common synced. And yes, it slows down: take a look at how files are actually stored. The directories get larger, VSS slows down.

We have subclasses of 3rd party stuff; that goes into a development directory; and a further subclass goes into a directory common to the client; and a further subclass goes into the project directory. These classlibs are parallel classes: every parent class is subclassed, down the line.

The key is: every developer has an identical directory structure, parallel to the VSS project directory tree.

Hank