Multiple developers; One solution

Classic Servoy
1

We have just started working with Servoy and are creating a demo solution to get our feet wet. Two of us will be working on this demo and are having a hard time getting clear about how Servoy handles two people in design mode at the same time.

What is the expected behaviour from Servoy? Has anyone had experience actually doing this and has your experience matched the expected behaviour?

~ Tara

2

Just a tickler here on this post…hoping to get some feedback on how Servoy handles more than one developer working on a solution at one time.

TIA

~ Tara

3

tara:
Just a tickler here on this post…hoping to get some feedback on how Servoy handles more than one developer working on a solution at one time.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that well. While the repository is a database that contains all of the information for the forms and their objects, there is no warning mechanism when more than one developer is working on the same form. Meaning two developers could be working on the same form and not know it. When it comes to writing the changes there could be conflicts if they both try to work with the same thing.

While it is possible to make Servoy much more capable with multiple developers, I believe the official suggestion for the current revs is going to be… “not supported”

4

we plan to support multiple simultaneous developers on the same repository in the future. At this moment the best would be to use two repositories, one master and one slave.

  1. Create solution on MASTER
  2. Export and import in SLAVE
  3. both developer and once in a while SLAVE does export which is import merged into MASTER.
5

Appreciate both clarifications and the option on working with multiple developers. We will try that out.

Do you have any sense of at what release Servoy will support this?

~ Tara

6

tara:
Do you have any sense of at what release Servoy will support this?

It depends on demand. We have a list of nearly 500 feature requests now and their priority is driven by actual demand, as more people will need multi developer support it’s priority will rise.

7

I was about to post the same kind of question and noticed this post. We too on the list seriously need this feature which will highly increase the speed of the development.

Normally in our FMP projects more than 3 of us will work on the same solution by hosting the files on the central server where we will freely design the layouts but the problem will occur only at the time field creation/ modifcation.

I would suggest the same way of loading the master solution at the central server and allow to open the solution from our own desktops and do any changes we want

Thanks
Ahmad

8

Add my vote for multiple simultaneous developers. Am moving to Servoy from Filemaker for large projects, and figured, given Servoy’s scope, multple simultaneous developers would already be supported. Work around will do for now, but true support would be great!

9

Add mine too. I was looking for a solution similar to CVS (concurrent version control) system where it provides a centralized repository and allows different users to have their own work area and each one can develop the system concurrently. It does the merge stuff and all.

Eager to see such feature in the next release… most optimistic :lol:

10

hi, please add our vote for multiple developer functionality… there are 2 of us working on our servoy solution at present and we would like to have 1 or 2 more developers work on it as well but probably wont try and do so until developer can support multiple developers.. at the moment we make sure we do not try and modify the solution at the same time unless we are working it together through a shared terminal services connection in windows which we sometimes do so that we can brainstorm together on the solution and pool our servoy knowledge..

Yes please… multiple developer support would be a fantastic addition

thanks
Eugene

11

Adding multiple developer support is in your best interests. We are your best programmers availible. Showcasing highly developed solutions like your crm demo will prove that Servoy is the way to go to even the most stingy of businessman. He will love the interface feel and feature packed environment so much, price will become a mute point.

(Not that Servoy is expensive anyway)

These very same solutions will turn out to be the ones distributed to a much wider user base meaning more exposure to clients as well. IT pro’s will catch on and then you will start turning a large operating margin.

-G

12

jaleman:
It depends on demand. We have a list of nearly 500 feature requests now and their priority is driven by actual demand, as more people will need multi developer support it’s priority will rise.

Bump

Could use this in feature in earnest now on my end!

  • David
13

Add my vote. We have run into this issue many times with FM and were hoping Servoy solved it. We use three developers at the same time.

jeff

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14

Advanced Multi developer support is one of the many new features that are planned for Servoy 3.0. It will contain a brand new Developer App server that will take care of locking (of UI elements and scripting), broadcasting and much more.

15

great news!!

Any idea of when 3.0 is going to arrive

Thanks
Ahmad

16

jaleman:
Advanced Multi developer support is one of the many new features that are planned for Servoy 3.0. It will contain a brand new Developer App server that will take care of locking (of UI elements and scripting), broadcasting and much more.

Add my request for this here, Jan. We have great need of it asap since work on a huge project starts shortly as you know. Many thanks.

17

Another vote for this feature. Hope to see it before 3.0

18

Hello, I really would like to see multiple developer support coming soon, too, but I have some thoughts on repository merging that is useful in any case.

Right now we are two people developing on one solution. In a situation where my colleague does basically his own stuff, I usually import his solution merging his features into my solution (import overwrites local). This is a problem if he saved a few methods that he was not mainly working on. If I import that, these methods are overwritten, without me wanting that. A similar problem occurs if a customer customizes a few forms himself.

What I think we would need is this:

  1. when exporting a solution you get a dialog similar to the method editor’s form tree.
  2. the tree shows you what is “inside” that form (elements, methods and data).
  3. you can then check which forms or parts of that form (elements, methods and data) you want to be exported
  4. for the data part, a query editor would be very helpful, too. I enter a query for the data exported. Then you can even go on record level…

This would solve lots of potential problems:

  1. you can export the data you want (for example some of my data is solution relevant; I would like to be able to update that on a customer’s solution without touching the other data)
  2. you export only those forms and/or methods, that you really want to be updated, everything else is untouched (for example a customer’s own form)

Whatever the “joint development” feature looks like, I think this kind of thing will be needed to provide better update possibilities on a customer’s solution.

Any thoughts on this?

Is this doable?

Thanks
Patrick

19

Just one more vote for the importance of multiple developers.

20

Hi,

Just wanted to say that from our experience, not being able to have multiple developers on the same repository concurrently is a major issue. The time spent exporting/importing is really unproductive, plus we’ve needed to make an application to track who is working on what part of the app at what time…

Looking forward to the multiple developer feature addition!

JDW