Posts Tagged 'SVN'

Subverting Flash – Diff me again

Working on legacy codebases isn’t a dream job. If your legacy codebase is a weird mix of scripting, media files and classes, chances are you’re a Flasher.

As far as I know, there is no end to end solution for diffing flas. The best tool we’ve got at the moment is a jsfl script at Software Secret weapons:

>> flash DOM to XML

The utility extracts ActionScript (AS) code from an *.fla file and outputs to (not always valid) XML. For all its shortages, this is unambiguously a first step towards a  workable solution for diffing Flash files.

I plan on extending the utility to extract asset attributes as well as AS code. once this is done, rather than relying on an existing diff tool, it could be a good idea to develop a hierarchical diff view. Besides that would give me the ideal excuse to write an XML diff tool and integrate with ee-xml, our budding XML editor

The last step is to integrate with a version control system. SVN via TortoiseSVN will be my pick. The hardest part was digging references from the docs:

>> Tortoise SVN diff tool setup (from the turtle’s mouth)

It’s been suggested that whoever brings a qualified diff tool  to the flash community will attain fame and glory.

I feel lazy.

Free online project management

OK, so I reviewed XML editors and I didn’t find anything suitable for me. I drafted technical solutions, scavenged some useful components. Next question: where do I host my project.

I was looking for no-cost, online SVN repositories and quickly realised that I could get an integrated solution for project management.

  • XP-Dev.com
  • sliksvn.com
  • unfuddle.com
  • cvsdude.com (SVN is supported)

There is a short article on the topic: Free Subversion Hosting for Small Projects (David Bolton @ About.com)

I’m testing XP-dev. XP-dev has unlimited users and plenty storage (~500mb); other providers charge for projects with 2 users or more.
The interface is straightforward; advertisement it displayed, still OK on my netbook (1024 x 600) so won’t be a problem on anything else.

I scheduled a couple of iterations, 16 stories and 24 tasks. Agile rocks.



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