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Comment Re:Too many subfolders (Score 1) 238

We don't really do "traditional programming", so to speak. Instead we make building automation projects (like HVAC controls), and the workflow generally goes like this:

1) We make cabling lists for electricians 2) we make HTML graphics, do PLC programming (say 1 to 5 days for small projects), 3a) we wait ~6 months until electricians have finished cabling (they have to wait for construction workers) 3b) while also installing our own control devices and testing the software, 4) project is finished, but are often revisited to add new features, fix something, answer questions, ...

If someone calls us and asks e.g. what kind of valve is at location 13, project 154, it's difficult and slow to checkout the project first and then access some file. And If we keep everything synced at all times, it's about 200 projects and 6 GB of data. It's not great to have a 6 GB git project or 200 git projects that we'd have to juggle.

Also we know the current solution is technically really ugly, but it works. Even our manager knows how to press a button to sync everything. Or how to access/edit/add a document from a 4 yo project, while talking on the phone and leaving the office in 2 minutes. Also note we have 5 laptops (i.e. 5 people), but 3 programmers, so not everyone is so tech-savvy.

Comment Re:Subsetting a repository of files (Score 1) 238

Thanks for your answer. I will look into TortoiseSVN. As I wrote above, of course we do know about git and the like, but the problem has been usability. We are not familiar with easy to use GUI clients. The solution should be something you could make your mother use (because of our CEO and installer, not the programmers).

Comment Re:stop trying, use git instead (Score 1) 238

OP here. Of course we have heard of version control, git and the like.

It is important that subscribing to a project is as easy as copying it from Z:\ to C:\projects\.

Does git accomplish this? Our programmers are comfortable on the command line, but our installer and CEO are not. Which solution would use you use with your mother?

easy to use

Let's imagine your mother has received a PDF document in her email, and she has to add it to the repo. Would you really make her use git? Just making her email the file to you isn't a good solution in this case.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to Synchronize Projects Easily?

Koookiemonster writes: This is a revised submission; previous was replied to by Timothy. I may revise more if needed. Previously I tried to keep the submission very short, so I missed many details.
(Re: https://f6ffb3fa-34ce-43c1-939d-77e64deb3c0c.atarimworker.io/submission/2941827/ask-slashdot-how-to-synchronize-projects-easily)

(You can also add the info of about some 200 folders in the Z:\-drive, if you wish), for scale.

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Our company has many projects, each one with a folder on a Samba drive (Z:\). Our problem is syncing only the programmers' current projects (~30 at any time) between Z:\ and their C:\Projects\-folder on five Windows 7 laptops. If we sync the whole Z:\-drive, our projects-folders would be filled with too many subfolders, making it difficult to navigate.

The folders contain OpenPCS projects (PLC) and related files (Word, Excel, PDF documents). A common project folder is 50 MB.

Is there any easy to use, low budget sync software with scripting, so that we could e.g. only sync folders that exist locally?

---
Read more...?
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Many programs do support selective sync, but choosing what to sync is awkward; projects and who works on them change daily. It is important that subscribing to a project is as easy as copying it from Z:\ to C:\projects\.

The Z:\-folder with all of our current and past projects is located on a desktop PC running Ubuntu Linux. It can share files e.g. via Samba or FTP. All PCs are on the same (W)LAN. Off-site backups of Z:\ are taken care of via rsync.

The company has three programmers, who usually handle their own projects alone, but very often others need to add files to projects. Bigger projects need more programmers.

Currently we use FreeFileSync with a custom piece of Javascript to make batch files that synchronize e.g. folders C:\projects\123_ProjectName\ and Z:\123_ProjectName\ if the local folder exists. However, that solution lacks versioning, real-time sync and deletion support. It only syncs when we press a button, and then older files are overwritten by newer files (two way sync; older files go to a "sync-deletions"-folder).

PS. Bonus points for solutions that allow renaming project folders without renaming them on all laptops.

Submission + - Finnish Copyright Initiative Gets 50,000 Signatures

Koookiemonster writes: The Finnish citizens' initiative site (Finnish/Swedish only) has fulfilled the required amount of signatures for the third initiative since its founding. This means that the Parliament of Finland is required to take the Common Sense in Copyright initiative into processing.

The initiative calls for removal of copyright infringement as a crime, reducing violations by private individuals to a misdemeanor.
Earth

Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming 344

Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists estimate that the US Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant, sulfate aerosols, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems. But NPR reports that this good news may have a surprising downside: cleaner air might actually intensify global warming. One benefit of sulfates is that they've been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Researchers believe greenhouse gases such as CO2 have committed the Earth to an eventual warming of roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a quarter of which the planet has already experienced. But thanks to cooling by aerosols starting in the 1940s, the planet has felt only a portion of that warming. And unlike CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, aerosols last in the air for a week at most, so cutting them would probably rapidly accelerate global warming. The author of 'Hack the Planet' says: 'As we take away that unexpectedly helpful cooling mask, we're going to be facing more global warming than we expected.'"
Earth

Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807

DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
IBM

IBM's Answer To Windows 7 Is Ubuntu Linux 863

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like IBM isn't much of a friend of Microsoft's anymore. Today IBM announced an extension of its Microsoft-Free PC effort together with Canonical Ubuntu Linux. This is the same thing that was announced a few weeks back for Africa (a program that began a year ago), and now it's available in the US. The big push is that IBM claims it will cost up to $2,000 for a business to move to Windows 7. They argue that moving to Linux is cheaper."

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