Check Out to different folders

Carlo Caprile · Post by **Carlo Caprile** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 8:09 am

Why Check Out operations can't be performed in folders different from Working Folder? Visual Source Safe admits them and this operation sometimes can be very useful...

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 8:19 am

Yes, that is just the way Vault was designed. Vault needs to have baseline copies of files, so that it can compute and send only the changes to the server, which really helps performance. So, in order to check in files, it needs to be from a working folder with a known baseline.

GregM · Post by **GregM** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 12:44 pm

If you have the option set to store data in the working folders, you can check out to a different folder by setting the working folder temporarily, checking out the file, and setting it back, correct? If so, the the vault client should be able to do this in a single operation, correct?

This is really useful when you have a file checked out to one location, and you need to make an unrelated change and check it in, before returning to work on the previous version. You can do this easily in VSS. You can't do it easily in Vault.

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 1:05 pm

Vault supports the ability to quickly switch working folders back and forth, regardless of where the state information is stored. So, if you want to quickly switch to a different working folder, make the change, then switch back to the original working folder, everything would retain the same state it had before.

The thing we want to avoid is copying hidden state files anytime you do a Get to a non-working folder. This would take up a lot of disk space and would be rarely what the user wants. So, instead of automatically doing that, requiring a manual step of switching working folders seems like a good compromise.

GregM · Post by **GregM** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 2:48 pm

I agree that doing it for a Get isn't appropriate. However, doing it for a checkout would be appropriate.

I thought that multiple working folders for the same file wasn't supported when the data wasn't stored in the working folder.

dan · Post by **dan** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 2:58 pm

Multiple working folders at the same time is unsupported, but switching working folders back and forth is supported regardless of were the state info is stored.

GregM · Post by **GregM** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 4:27 pm

I thought I read somewhere that if you didn't have the data stored in the working folder, if you changed to one directory, did a get, and then changed back to the old directory, the files in the old directory would be "unknown".

dan · Post by **dan** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 12:58 pm

GregM wrote:I thought I read somewhere that if you didn't have the data stored in the working folder, if you changed to one directory, did a get, and then changed back to the old directory, the files in the old directory would be "unknown".

Ah, I see the confusion. Files will go to Unknown when you choose to store your state information in a different location (either going from storing it in App data to underneath the working folder or vice versa), and yes, then you need to do a Get to overwrite the file and get new baselines.

Also, if you switch to a working folder that you have never set up in Vault before that already has copies of all the files in the repository, those files will also be Unknown, and you'd need to do a Get then too. However, once you have used the working folder and it has state info, it is safe to switch back and forth between 2 (or more) working folders.

One other note on this is that in 3.0 we handle Unknown files a lot better, so this should be less of a problem. In 3.0, we actually check CRCs of Unknown files in the working folder, and if they match a version in the repository, we know the baseline, and just it from the server.

brettski · Post by **brettski** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 9:43 am

If you need to make a quick change to a file, just edit it straight from the repository within Vault GUI.

Right click on the file and choose edit. Simple, quick.

Perry · Post by **Perry** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:27 pm

> Right click on the file and choose edit. Simple, quick

But then you can't verify compilation?