Automating Checkins and Builds with VFP and VSS

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I use ProjectHooks a lot in my day to day VFP development – for a variety of things:

a) copying the completed APP into a test and/or deployment directory
b) ensuring version #s are consistent across our remote development team

But what I’m always missing is a way to ensure the latest code is always checked in.

We deal with a lot of remote programmers so it’s really important that if I finish working on something that it gets checked in so if others have to work on it, they can grab it without worry.

What I have found is that I can call

_VFP.ActiveProject.Files(1).Checkin()

and it will pull up the VSS Check-in utility BUT there’s one gotcha:

it only works if you have the Project Builder open.

If you simply issue a BUILD EXE xxx FROM xxx, it won’t run. Now I suppose, I COULD do a MODIFY PROJECT _VFP.ActiveProject.Name before hand and then let it go but is that really necessary?

I could also force an update by manually calling the internal check-in commands but that’s a kludge. Has anyone else ever come across this – What did you do for a solution?

3 thoughts on “Automating Checkins and Builds with VFP and VSS”

  1. Warning: Legacy knowledge disclaimer: I haven’t worked in Fox since 2004, and I forgot more than I recall. However, I remember doing quite a bit of work in VSS, and taught a few sessions on ProjectHooks (http://www.tedroche.com/Present/1999/PjxHooks.html)

    I always worked from the Project Manager, but there’s a neat hack: The PJX is just a table, and tables can be part of databases. Add the table to a database, and enable database events for the database. DBC_BeforeOpenTable gives you the “OnOpen()” method they didn’t want to add to ProjectHooks.

  2. You can open the project with a NOSHOW clause if you don’t want to see the Project Manager. The projecthook will be instantiated, and you will have the ActiveProject reference you need for the CheckIn method.

  3. Rick,

    I know the NOSHOW SHOULD work – but it messes things up if you’re in the middle of a build while doing it.

    Example:
    Build exe xxx from xxx
    (Starts the build hook)
    In the build hook, I want to ensure we get all the latest code so I would have to do a
    MODIFY PROJ xxx NOSHOW
    _VFP.Activeproject.files(1).getlatest()

    and that somehow breaks it for some strange reason.

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