jackiw@cs.swarthmore.edu (Nick Jackiw) (02/06/90)
While offering no where near as sophisticated a control mechanism, Dantz
Development's Retrospect file archiver can be used for managing programming
projects up to a respectably large size. In addition, it has sufficient
other use that it might be a reasonably-priced alternative to MPW's
Projector (which suffers already-noted problems when used with THINK C or
Pascal).
I keep all files relating to a development project in one folder (which
usually contains subdirectories for documentation, tester feedback, code,
and prototype versions). Every time I advance the state of the project
one incremental stage--i. e. finalize a new development version and
document it--Retrospect "archives" the folder to a massive archive file
which is sitting someplace else on my hard disk. In this case, "archiving"
means choosing all files in the development folder since it was last archived,
compressing and time-stamping them, and _adding_ them to this master backup
file (which still contains all versions of this file archived with prior
time-stamps).
At any point, I can get Retrospect to restore my project (or create a duplicate
of it) to a previous state (i. e. all archives in the file dated from the
beginning of the project up to some specified date/time). And when I'm
paranoid, I can backup the archive-file onto some other volume (also with
Retrospect, if I want).
This provides fairly efficient *linear* project management. If you're the
sort who hates to add a new feature because you have to change so many files
before you can see results, and fear that changing all these files might just
botch things up irrevocably, Retrospect lets you declare a milestone state
to which you can always return. Presumably by nesting archives, you could
even attempt a nonlinear management (where different teams have different
states and different files "checked out"--i. e. modified), though this would
be more cumbersome.
Retrospect supports a variety of media, seems pretty robust, and costs
about $155 from MacWarehouse; $152 from MacConnection (where it has a 30-day
money-back guarantee).
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_ _|\____ Nick Jackiw | Visual Geometry Project | Math Department
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