Swiper FP8 Integration Rollout

Notes Domino 9.0.1 FP8 is finally here and as far as I know (I have yet to download it) it includes the necessary changes which will allow Swiper to swipe whatever it wants, whenever it wants, which is good news for people who don’t like to have ‘Build Automatically’ turned on.

Plan of Attack for release of Swiper version 2.0.0

So, I haven’t actually downloaded FP8 yet,  so I can’t say for sure that the updated version works perfectly. Here is a bit of background, I had been working with IBM team to make sure that the necessary changes would be sufficient. I received an updated version of the ‘team’ plugin and have tested my POC successfully against that updated plugin, but I haven’t tested it fully against the full new FP8 because, as previously mentioned, I haven’t downloaded it yet.

So the plan is: I am putting a pre-release of Swiper v2.0.0 up on the Swiper Github repository.

If you have updated to FP8 and would like to test the new version I would very much appreciated it!

Here are the steps to install and ugrade:

• Download Swiper v2.0.0-alpha release from Github and install to designer
• ‘Remove Swiper’ and then ‘Add Swiper’ from any projects currently using swiper
  Basically, the ‘remove’ will remove the old builders that are no longer needed, then ‘add’ will re-enable the new version.
• Check that it is swiping your metadata whenever you sync!

I will also upgrade my Notes over the next week and test. Once I have heard back from a few people that it is working well, then I will prepare the final release and update the OpenNTF Project page.

Bonus Feature!

I added a new feature: there is a ‘Sync’ toolbar button to perform a sync on the currently active project. Give it a try and let me know if useful.

Background of the Reason for new Integration point

If you are curious about why there was a change necessary to allow Swiper to perform more efficiently, here is a summary:

Swiper version 1 worked like this:

• Designer has a ‘Builder’ which triggers the sync process of Design Elements to Disk
• Swiper version 1 sandwiched this Builder with 2 builders of it’s own, a Pre and Post Sync builder.
• The Pre sync builder saved some info about files that might be exported
• The Post sync builder used Pre Sync builder to figure out if files were exported, if they were then it filtered them

The trouble with this, is that there is more than one way for the Sync process to be triggered. If it was triggered on ‘project open’ event or manually with the right-click menu, then the Swiper builders would not run.

IBM have now made a modification to provide a ‘SyncListener’ extension point, so that a class can be registered to listen to import / export / rename / delete events, and has the opportunity to run some code when those events fire.

This allows swiper to run whenever there is a sync operation, regardless of when it was called.

So Swiper version 2 simply listens for the events and then acts accordingly whenever they happen.

Other uses for SyncListener

I am also curious if there are other options to utilise this feature to correct DXL Import export errors. One example is to do with agent scheduling for all-day agents. A custom Scheduling metadata file could be created and used to save the agent scheduling info on export, and then configure the agent after import.

Feedback welcome

Let me know how you go, you can report bugs either on OpenNTF Swiper Project or the Github Repository Issues

Or maybe you just want to say it is all working well! It is nice to hear when people say thanks so if it is helping you please don’t be shy! I do get some nice comments from time to time and it is a great ego boost.

When I first learned of Source Control Enablement in Designer, I was excited and then disappointed.

It was clearly not a workable solution if you needed to do any sort of branching and merging, which is core to good source control.

I was determined to get it working property. The initial DORA solution, took me about 2-3 months in my spare time to problem solve, develop and prepare so it was robust enough to share with others. It was workable but still a bit too fiddly. Later I decided that it would be cleaner to have it integrated into Designer, and a further month or two of development to get it ready. It was much more robust to install, and almost perfect.

This latest version should complete the puzzle, and hopefully there will be no more major developments needed!

I cannot imagine being able to manage the projects I have been working on over the past few years if I did not have source control, so I hope that my efforts have also enable you to work collaboratively with others, and also manage your own local branches as well!