Git, Alpha, Team Development

[scrimej]

Looking for some guidance for using Alpha with Git with a team on a single large project.

1) I open the Alpha project and enable git using the "git" button on the Alpha web projects control panel. This creates the .git folder within the "workspace" folder for the workspace I have selected. This happens to be my "default" workspace and currently the only workspace I have in this project.

2) I created a git folder on a network share and added a sub-folder with the same name as my project I use this as my shared remote repository. No workspace files, just the git tracking folders. I don't want to use github/bitbucket, I'd rather keep this all on our internal servers. Creating this folder, I then initialize it from the local repository (i.e. the default.webproject folder of my Alpha project)

3) Now I want to allow developers to work on this project, so I plan on using branches where each developer will get their own branch.

Here's where I need some guidance.....
1) Are all of us opening the same project on a network folder or should each developer make a local copy of the project and each have their own local project?

If we share a common project I think it will get confusing to see the untracked/modified file counts changing in the project as we all work on things throughout the day, but it seems wasteful to make local copies of the entire project for each developer. It also seems more error prone to have multiple copies of the project that need to be updated from the remote repository as opposed to a single shared project kept in sync with the remote repository.

If I have each developer do a clone to clone the remote repository to a local repository, this doesn't contain all the files needed to work on the project locally. For example, based on where Alpha places the .git folder in a single workspace of the project the only folder tracked is that single workspace folder. So cloning, clones the shared remote repository to a local copy but that clone does not contain the alpha project file and so you can't open the local copy of the cloned remote repository based on this. If I move the .git folder to the root of the folder alpha creates when you generate a new project will this cause other issues if it tries to sync the project file or other files contained in the root folder as opposed to a single workspace folder?

Thanks for any ideas on how to best implement this

Jeremy

[peteconway]

All I can say is, do whatever the the documentation tells you, if you have difficulty then report it and ask AA for assistance.
https://documentation.alphasoftware....ntegration.xml
Pete

[scrimej]

Thanks Pete. The documentation is great for installing git, adding git to a project but my question is not related to that. How does Alpha want you to use git in a team environment? Does every team member open the same project or does each team member create a local copy of the project. The git part is all setup.

[besttech]

Maybe this would be helpful but it does cost some $:

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[scrimej]

I am willing to pay for this training if it contains what I need but I've asked the author and haven't received a response yet.

• How to install and configure the GIT system on your development environment. (done)
• Creating your first local repository. (done)
• What is a repository and how it is structured on your development system. (done)
• Using the GIT commit system to manage your development process. (done)
• Using GIT to roll back changes in your system. (done)
• GIT branching - the powerful tool for making your development life much easier. (done)
• Remote repositories - Both public and Private (done)
• And lots of other great information about how to use the GIT system. (the unknown)

My question is very specific and unrelated to git. Let's take git out of the equation. If you have a team of developers working on a project, does each developer work in the shared project folder or does each developer create a local copy of the project and then handle pushing and pulling to ensure their project is up to date with the server and that the changes they make don't conflict with other updates.

I don't feel like I'm phrasing the question well enough to be answered. Many of the answers I'm getting are using local and remote repositories interchangeably with the Alpha files. From what I'm sensing, each developer creates their own "local" cloned repository of the "remote master" repository. If that's the case, which makes perfect sense then my follow up question is the following:

When you git enable an Alpha project it creates a .git folder in the workspace folder of the project you are working on. If I then create the initial remote repository from this scenario, my repository only contains the "workspace" folder. The parent of that folder is the project folder and in that project folder is the .adb alpha project file used to open a project to work on. Since this parent folder is not part of the .git folder then when a developer clones the remote repository to a local repository it is lacking the project files and thus there is no file for Alpha to open. I know the answer will be simple when I am able to properly relay the question but that seems to be the big sticking point at this time.

Thanks..

[besttech]

Sorry, I just am not familiar enough with GIT to speak to any of your question but maybe you should speak to Alpha Sales about Alpha Cloud. Cloud gives you a lot of control with development, testing and then production. You can have developers publishing to the cloud and then after testing move those changes into production.

[Peter.Greulich]

Jeremy,

Your top level alpha folder - the one with the adb file should be where you git folder resides - see attached image. I have obscured certain file names as my client is hyper-paranoid.

It seems to me the whole point of git is for everyone to have their own version of the db. If everyone is using the same "team' folder doesn't that necessarily conflict? You need to have your .gitignore file with the following content:

# Ignore adb, alb, alm, aex, wcp_settings, webpublishhistory, recent_files
*.ADB
*.ALB
*.ALM
*.MUF
*.AEX
*.wcp_settings
*.backup
*.a5hist
*.WebPublishHistory
*.recent_files
lastSelectedProfile
__staging.staging/
__iispublishhistory.iispublishhistory/
/backup
# /Uncomment next line and set to projectname_History
/wXXXXXXXXXX-PR_History
componentTypeCache

We don't use Alpha's built in git functionality as a member of our team evaluated it and found it doesn't play well in teams.

Good luck!

Alpha no longer lets you upload images so here is a link:

[scrimej]

Excellent. Thanks Peter. I thought it made more sense at the workspace folder level than at the project folder level but Alpha chose not to take that route and I was even told that it didn't need make sense putting it there. Without it at the parent level and having those extra files in the git repository then when someone clones a local copy they don't have the workspace, connection strings, etc that are all part of that parent folder. Yes you only need those once, but I see you added them to the gitignore so problem solved..

One follow up question for you. If you put the git folder in the parent folder then Alpha no longer includes the git functionality within the program, correct? At that point you are coding in Alpha as normal and all git related functionality is performed outside of Alpha?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[pettechservices]

Peter - what are you doing instead of using the built-in GIT functionality? Are you just using GIT desktop and checking in/out that way, etc. or using something totally different? I have started using GIT but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired - there is no check-out/in functionality and i think that is important.

[Peter.Greulich]

Sorry guys. I guess this forum still doesn't work right as I never received notification that anyone responded to my post. Anyway...

Jeremy,

Right, we are not using Alpha's built-in Git functionality. Yes, we code in Alpha normally.

pettechservices,

We are using GitHub as our repository and Git Gui as our client.

--

We have been using Git for three years now on a very large Alpha Five web project with great success.