Can I make placeholder config files?

RRoyall · Post by **RRoyall** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:41 pm

I work for a fairly small development house and my boss is very gung-ho about getting into version control because we're just about to hire some outside contractors to work on some jobs for us out of the office. I'm evaluating Vault because it's easier to set up for out-of-house access than Subversion and VSS but I have one question I can't seem to find an answer to.

Because so many people will be working out-of-house, they want to take copies of our client's SQL Server DB to load locally. Each programmer will then have their own connection config file pointed at their local database server. In Vault, we want to have a dummy copy of this config file pointing to the client's server. Each programmer will check-out this dummy config file to be edited with their own particular custom connection string (pointing to their local SQL Server instance). Does Vault have a way to set the working folders so that upon check-in, these various config files do NOT overwrite the original dummy config file in the repository?

Post by **jclausius** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:04 pm

In Vault, there is an operation of pin. This locks the file so no changes can be made to the file.

Could you pin the config file, thus preventing an accidental checkin?

RRoyall · Post by **RRoyall** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:14 pm

Wow, that sounds like exactly what I'm looking for! Does the Vault server automatically disregard pinned files that are trying to be checked back in (with the other changed files) in CVS mode or would that cause the commit transaction to fail since the pinned file cannot be modified?

dan · Post by **dan** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 8:27 pm

If you include a pinned file in a transaction, it will fail, since the pinned file can't be checked in. Also, you can't checkout a pinned file, or pin a checked out file, but that shouldn't affect you if you are using CVS mode.

The only way to avoid having these files in your pending change set is to be in VSS mode (and not check them out), where they would be Renegade, and therefore not appear in your pending change set.

GregM · Post by **GregM** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 9:43 pm

Sounds like the easiest thing to do would be to either put it in a directory outside any working folders, or put it in a folder by itself and cloak the folder.

RRoyall · Post by **RRoyall** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:53 am

I'm not entirely sure that will work: I am primarily referring to the app.config file that VS2003 creates on Windows application projects. Each form's Connection object reads their connection string out of this config file. I don't know that I can relocate this file succesfully and still have VS build the project correctly...

GregM · Post by **GregM** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 2:09 pm

This *would* require that you manually relocate the config file after downloading.