This is a question that applies to both the Toolbars and to the Grids mainly. We have been using Infragistics for many years. About a year ago we started using Visual Studio 2010 and with it we started using Team Foundation Server (TFS) and started taking advantage of Branching and Merging our source code under Source Control.
For the most part this works great. One developer can add new features to the Trunk branch while another developer can add a change to the release branch the then merge his changes all the way up to the Trunk branch, merging his code file with the version that the other developer was working on.
The problem comes when working with Toolbars and Grids. Those 2 controls tend to generate sub control like toolbar buttons and Columns, and those sub controls are automatically assigned names that are beyond the control of the programmer. Even if the programmer changes the name of the button or column, it is really only changing the string key and not the physical name.
The real problem is when Dev A adds a button to Trunk, and Infragistics names it ButtonTool5. Then Dev B adds a button to the release branch, and Infragistics ALSO names it ButtonTool5. And it happens to place the buttons on the same line of code. When Dev B tries to merge his changes up to Dev A's code file, he is going to run into trouble. In most cases it will show up as a conflict and you are forced to make a messy manual change to it. In other cases, one button can simply overwrite the other button because they were names the same and are on the same line of code.
If you have ever looked at the code generated by the toolbar, you know that it can be hard to follow, and you probably don't want to go messing with it. But at the same time, if you have several other changes in your code file, you are forced to at least sift through the designer conflicts to ensure that your non-designer code does not get lost.
My question here is: has anyone else run into this issue? Does anyone have any tips to help get around this problem? Is there a best practice here?
And finally, is there a property that I don't know about on the toolbar or the grid that allows you to specify the name given to the ButtonTools or Column to prevent a naming conflict when you merge?
Thanks in advance,
Ryan
Like you said, the names of the sub-objects are assigned automatically by VS. VS only lets you assign names to Components, because it uses member variables to store them. If all tools in an UltraToolbarsManager were Components, you would have a member variable for each root and instance tool and things would get messy fast, so that is why they are local variables, and unfortunately, cannot be named. You can submit a feature request for the ability to name tools and columns and we can look into the feasibility of getting involved in the serialization process and allowing the developer to name their own local variables for these items. But there is no guarantee that this will even be possible.
Thanks Mike.
That is kinda what I figured.
So now the question is posed to all other developers out there. Have any of you run into this, and do you have any manual tricks or techniques that you usually employ to prevent merges from stomping on each others code?
I would love to hear any suggestions.