Source Manager 4.1
                               By Larry Gerndt

Registration

Source Manager is shareware.  The registration fee is $25. (Site licenses are available at a reduced rate.)  Please send your registration payment to the address below, and I sincerely thank you for your support.  

                             Larry Gerndt
                                    877 Heatherstone Way #201
                                    Mountain View, CA  94040
                                    Phone: 415-967-4836
                                    email: jazmann@shell.portal.com
What it is

Source Manager is a shareware application designed for developers who use either Apple's Projector or Microsoft's SourceSafe 3.0 (or greater) source code control system.  It provides the user with a graphical user interface which is feature-rich, powerful, intuitive, colorful, and just a joy to use.  And you'll never need to boot MPW again, because Source Manager interfaces to SourceServer (for Projector control) and ToolServer (for SourceSafe control).

If you don't read manuals...
If you don't feel like reading all this, just go for it, and use the balloon help if you need it.  There are no big surprises in here, it's just a reference manual.  But there are a few macro commands which are more fully explained here than would fit into a balloon.

Why I wrote it
When I began using Projector a couple years ago, I was surprised how cumbersome it was to use.  Not only do you have to boot up MPW to use it, but the user interface is, shall we say, weak at best.  With the introduction of SourceServer, the standalone, appleevent-driven equivalent of Projector,  Apple opened the way up for third parties to write their own interface.  Well Symantec did just that, and guess what?  It was a little worse than Projector.  Frustrated, but excited by the opportunity to be the first one to do it right, I began writing Source Manager.

Just about the time Source Manager got on its legs, in terms of features and ease of use, my company switched to SourceSafe because we began doing cross-platform development.  Well, the Mac implementation of SourceSafe is an MPW tool, with no graphical user interface.  So I was back to MPW and typing commands again.  Again came the annoyance of waiting for MPW to boot, setting up paths, executing scripts, and trying to figure out what's going on.  As days turned into weeks, I began muttering to myself, things about ToolServer, and how I might be able to use it to control SourceSafe's MPW tool.  And so, the process began again, working late nights, neglecting my cats and my girlfriend, and figuring out obscure TCL bugs.  And in the process of writing the SourceSafe interface, the SourceServer interface benefited from some very nice new features, which both sides now share.  I wrote Source Manger with Symantec's TCL, which took awhile to learn, and I've put an inordinate amount of time into this program, since it's my first project of this scale.  I've made every effort to "do the right thing" and to also do the "it would really be cool if it would..." things.  It truly is amazing how much time it takes to write a program which you only charge $25 for.  It's my first baby, and I'm proud of it and I hope you enjoy using it.  My customers know, I care about your experience with this program, and I'll implement most feature suggestions you give me.

How it works, in a nutshell
Here's how it works.  Drag a folder or disk onto SM's icon.  It will then scan for files and build one or more tables of the files it found.  You can specify what types of files you want it to list, (i.e. Modifiable, Modified-Read-Only, and Orphans).   For each file, it shows the file's
     • Filename
     • Project (if any)
     • Status (i.e. Modifiable, Read-Only, etc)
     • Last Modified date
     • Comment
     • Task
     • Lock status

Once you have a table up, you can do most anything you would do with Projector or SourceSafe, only much faster and easier, thanks to SM's slick user interface.  The rest of the manual describes each command, shortcuts, and other useful information, but if you're like me, you hate reading manuals, so go ahead, start playing.  Drag a folder containing some source-controlled files onto SM and check out the things you can do (maybe you should make a copy first, heh heh).  Ok, I've given you two chances now, to bail out of reading this manual.  If you still want to read it, I'm amazed at your tolerance.  I will try to keep it brief, and to the point (unlike this introduction).

A Word About Two Other Utilities

There are two other utilities I have written and made available on AOL which I think you may find useful: Edit Comment (which is currently only for Think C users, but soon to be available for Code Warrior as well) adds an Edit Comment... menu item to Think's Edit menu, which brings up the same comment-editing window you see in Source Manager, for editing the 'ckid' comment of the file displayed in the active window. It is not an INIT, is very unobtrusive and easy to install, and fully compatible with 5.0 through 7.0.2 and probably beyond. The price of this is also $25.  It's become a very popular utility at my company.  See the built-in read-me when you download it for details.  Folder Fonterizer is a free utility which I used to often, before Source Manager.  It's a drag-n-drop multi-purpose utility which I originally wrote to change the font and tabs of all Think C files at once.  It has evolved beyond its name, since it now does a number of other unrelated but useful things such as set Type/Creator, set window position, etc.  Enjoy, and send me ego strokes if you like it.

Registration

Please send your registration payment to the address below.  Thanks for your support!

Larry Gerndt
877 Heatherstone Way #201
Mountain View, CA  94040
Phone: 415-967-4836
email: jazmann@shell.portal.com