Pending Change Set in CVS Mode is not up to date

[PACEGMBH]

Hi Jeff, Eric, Dan and who else was involved with this topic meanwhile:

I'm pretty shocked to read this (and especially the explanation in http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=6483). Your 'Solution' to disable the ability to set the same working folder for two repository folders is the worst thinkable solution for our problem which we where discussing here. It is the opposite from our request and definitely not what Eric seemed to promise. The bugID (10098) had nothing to do with our request, which we unfortunately could not check because of a lacking public bug list.
This 'Fix' avoids that we can upgrade to 3.5. Does it make sense to prolong our gold support contract in this case? We are discussing it internally.
How do you want to deal with the problem? Can we expect a correction in the near future (e.g. in 3.5.1)?

Thanks and best regards,

Carsten.

[jclausius]

Carsten:

Eric logged a bug to investigate the problem, item 10098. After he and Dan looked into it further, they determined there was no simple way to fix the problem.

In short, Vault was basically not designed to work this way. The Vault client uses one working folder's state file to determine what is available in the repository. When Vault is configured to use the same working folder, a GET from one path corrupts the state file used from the other path. This can cause a vast number of problems in the Vault client with versions, scanning for changes, etc.

I wish there was a quick fix to help you out, but this new behavior of disallowing multiple working folder assignments keeps users from encountering problems their client side state files.

[PACEGMBH]

Hi Jeff, Eric and Dan:

I looked through the whole discussion thread again and got the impression, that your decision to disable the ability to set the same working folder for two repository folders without communicating that clearly to your customers was definitively not that what customers expected from SourceGear.
I think that the SourceGear management should give us a clear statement, how the customer interaction process can be improved in the future.

The consequence of this change for us is as follows:
We will not be able to upgrade to 3.5 (and will therefore not extend our Gold Support) until you re-establish properly working support for setting the same working folder for two repository folders.
It is really important for us that you communicate a target date/release for properly implementing this feature. It was one of the reasons that we migrated to Vault from VSS instead of migrating to an alternative SCM tool.

In the past we liked your way of dealing with issues and continuously improving your product. I hope that we can reach the same level of customer satisfaction again.

Best regards

Frank

[ericsink]

It is really important for us that you communicate a target date/release for properly implementing this feature.

I'm sorry that you are disappointed with the decisions we have made about this issue. We always prefer to implement the features requested by our users. In this case, things are a bit more complicated:

1. It would be a substantial effort to implementing the capability you want.

2. The percentage of our total user base who wants this is feature is very, very small.

3. The feature is simply not consistent with what we consider to be the best practices for the way source control tools should be used.

4. Implementing this feature would cause the format of the working folder information to change for all of our users. We work very hard to avoid this, since it causes significant disruption to people when they upgrade.

In short, you are asking us to make a change which we consider high risk, high cost and somewhat unwise, and that change that will benefit less than 1% of our customers while causing some degree of negative impact to the other 99%. If you were in our shoes, what would you do?

Those are the facts as I understand them right now. If something changes, I would be delighted if we could implement this capability for you. Until then, we cannot promise a date or version when it will happen.

It appears that we have done a poor job handling the communication with you over this matter. I apologize for that, and I hope we can find a way for you and Vault to work together happily.

[PACEGMBH]

Hi Eric,

in the meantime we investigated the possible effort to adapt to the changed working folder policy (in 3.5) on our side. Unfortunately we will also have a substantial effort in order to change our repository and project layout. I could provide you offline with an estimate in man days for the change.
On the other side I have seen several posts of other users, who were not happy with this change in 3.5. Therefore I would ask you to reconsider your statement:

2. The percentage of our total user base who wants this is feature is very, very small.

I believe that there is a clear contradiction between the facts that Vault is supposed to be a perfect replacement for VSS on one hand (compare your ads ) and the fact that VSS supports setting multiple working folders, what is not supported in Vault for the reasons you gave in your last post.

I understand your statements on the risk estimates:

4. Implementing this feature would cause the format of the working folder information to change for all of our users. We work very hard to avoid this, since it causes significant disruption to people when they upgrade.

The question from my developer's point of view is, whether there might be a smart way to reduce risks.

In general we are still not happy with your decision and we can still not fully accept your arguments.

Frank Neumann

[ericsink]

We've been re-evaluating this issue as we receive feedback from more customers. Thanks for the update.

[PACEGMBH]

Eric,

what is the current result of your re-evaluations? Did the re-evalution lead to a concrete plan for the implementation of this feature?

Frank Neumann