backing up project files & alterations

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chevy6600
Flowcode V4 User
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backing up project files & alterations

Post by chevy6600 »

After spending some time working to the early hours trying to sort my flowcode programing skills, gave me an idea that i think would be good to have in the upcoming flowcode v4....just in case you had got an idle moment and were wondering what else you could add to the v4 update. :mrgreen:

THE PROBLEM:
When you start a project and you need to do some think useful it is inevitable that `C` code will be required which makes the flowcode debugger non functional, so all that can be done is to download to a chip or download a file for other 3rd party software to debug, both of which cause the flowcode to `require saving project` which then over writes what was saved before.
So after a few changes have been made and each time a `save` was needed, there are times when the last changes made were not as good as the original version and you cannot go back because it has been replaced. Now i know there is the `back step` but that only partially solves the problem, ounce flowcode has been shut down all back steps are forgotten.
I have 3 or 4 programs running at the same time, proteus and 2 or more flowcode programs (to do comparisons) together with a hardware prototype, and occasionally i have closed down the wrong flowcode program and lost those particular alterations. Other times i have had my pc close down causing loss of the various stages of changes. But mostly, i collect various stages of a project because some set-ups are believed to be worth keeping until some other setup proves to be better, and the only way to do this is to laboriously save with different names, opening one program , closing others etc. So manually saving each change in a separate file is never done.
I am fairly certain that you guys have had times when you were making changes to a program and wished you had a version which was so many versions back.

THE CURE.
As the flowcode program detects a change has been made and asks to `save`, why not have flowcode to automatically save the project with the current name adding on a version number, eg. `test program 100`. each time a save is done a new file is added to the data base. I see these files are only kb long so they will not take that much room up.
To make this user friendly, have a setting in the menu that allows the user to be able to set the max number of project saves i.e. `max number 200 saves` before flowcode stops increasing the file data base. That way the user can plan on whether they want to set it at `1` knowing they will only have one file keeping their computer tidy or the user can set it to `100` because they are going to do a lot of changes and would like to keep various versions as and when.
I myself after i finish say one project i pick out the versions that i want and then delete all the others.

I also think that it would be useful for schools as the teacher can refer the kids back to say `program xyz132` "was a good example, so kids go back to that one...."

I believe making this addition would be more useful for a greater proportion of users than say adding on another macro of some sort. It would also be useful in your `formula flowcode` version as users will be able to keep a greater number of versions of the robot moves than the user would normally have.
So what do you think.

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Steve
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Re: backing up project files & alterations

Post by Steve »

Good idea, but it's probably too late for Flowcode V4 (I've got enough to do for that already!).

chevy6600
Flowcode V4 User
Posts: 115
Joined: Fri Feb 22, 2008 6:38 pm
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Re: backing up project files & alterations

Post by chevy6600 »

Oh darn it.. :|
Some how i thought that may be the case.

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