This topic applies only to the IBM Business Process Manager Advanced configuration.

Sharing your integration project through CVS

IBM® Integration Designer provides the capability to develop applications in a team environment using Concurrent Versions System (CVS).

About this task

Through Eclipse, Integration Designer provides a client for the Concurrent Versions System (CVS). This topic explains how to share a project with a CVS repository.

The Business Integration view includes team development support for the following operations:

Add (share) a project to CVS
Synchronize changes between the local application and remote repository
Commit local changes to the remote repository
Update (replace) local workspace artifacts with latest version on remote repository

The Business Integration view provides a logical view of the resources in each module, mediation module, and library. Within each project, the resources are categorized by type. Logical resources shown in the navigation tree in the Business Integration view do not necessarily have a one-to-one mapping to physical files. When you use the Team menu options you will notice that the physical files presented in the Synchronize and CVS Repositories views do not directly map to the resources that you see in the Business Integration view. Always work from the Business Integration view when sharing a project or committing changes, so that you share or commit all the necessary resources.

You can also refer to a technical paper on the IBM developerWorks® site, Team development with WebSphere® Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server: Developing applications using CVS.

The topics that follow illustrate the basic steps to share a project when working in a CVS environment.

Procedure

Before you can share a project with a CVS repository, you need to add the repository to the CVS repositories view.
1. Switch to the CVS Repository Exploring perspective, right-click and select New > Repository Location.
2. In the Add CVS Repository wizard, enter the location, authentication, and connection information.
3. Click Finish.
In the Business Integration view, select the module or library that you want to share, right-click, and select Team > Share project.
In the Share Project wizard, Select CVS as the repository type, and click Next.
Choose to use the existing repository connection that you created previously and click Next.
Choose to use the project name as the module name and click Next. Never rename the module when placing it in CVS. The SCA.module file depends on the module name.
The next page shows you the project that is to be shared. Expand the project to view the physical files within it. The decorator showing an arrow with a plus sign indicates that the file is new, and does not exist on the server. Select the project and click Finish. A version of the module including all its resources will be created in the shared repository.

Results

After the project has been added to CVS control, new team actions are available in the pop-up menu. Among other tasks, you can use those actions to synchronize with the repository, commit changes to the repository, and update your local workspace. The examples that follow provide additional information about these actions.

Example

The following examples illustrate how to commit changes, check out a project from the shared repository, receive changes into your workspace, compare files, and resolve conflicts.

Committing changes

Suppose you have made some changes to a shared module, DataMergeModule. In the assembly diagram, you added a BPEL process named TransferFromBrokerageToBankProcess and connected it to two new Java™ components. The Java components are implemented as Component1Impl and Component2Impl. After the assembly diagram is saved, the Business Integration view shows a > decorator beside the three changed resources: DataMergeModule, Component1Impl, and Component2Impl.

Before committing your resources, you should always synchronize the project with the repository to see the resources that have changed in the local workspace and in the repository. Select the project, right-click and select Team> Synchronize with Repository. The Synchronize view shows the physical files in the module. Change decorators indicate the changed files.

Switch to the Physical Resources view. This view also shows the changed physical files, indicated by a > decorator.

Always add or check out complete modules to or from CVS, rather than individual folders or artifacts. To commit your changes, work from the Business Integration view. Select the module, right-click, and select Team > Commit. Commit updates CVS with a new version of the file. If there are conflicts, you have the opportunity to see and resolve them.

When you delete an authored file from your local workspace and synchronize with CVS, you will see a minus sign (-) beside the artifact, indicating that you are deleting the artifact from the server.

The commit process uploads an empty file structure to CVS, even though all the files in the folders are derived. Empty folders are pruned by default when you extract a module. You might see an error message for a missing gen/scr directory. You can ignore the message. CVS flags the omission if the directory is missing, but the gen/scr directory is optional.

Checking out a project from the shared repository

When you check out a module from CVS, you are extracting the entire service module, so you do not need to create a shell module beforehand. The entire project structure that is in CVS is mirrored in your Business Integration view, except that each entry from the SCM has the label CVS in brackets after it.

Before you check out a project, synchronize it to view changes that another team member may have made to the server version of the project. Select the project from the Business Integration view, right-click, and select Team > Synchronize. The left facing arrow beside a file shows that it has changed in the shared repository. Always synchronize with the repository before you commit changes.

To check out a project, switch to the CVS Repositories view, select the project, right-click and select Check Out. Check out dependent libraries if you need to use artifacts from them.

Receiving changes into your workspace

Use the Update command to check CVS for changes that others have provided and update your local files if changes are found. The Update command places new remote versions of files in your local workspace. Always synchronize before you update your files. Be very cautious about using Update with override, which replaces local files without warning about conflicts.

You might see an error message for a missing gen/scr directory. You can ignore this message or get rid of it by disabling the directory pruning option. From the menu, select Window > Preferences > Team > CVS. Clear the Prune empty directories option. Click OK.

Comparing files

To view the difference between the local and remote files, you can open the files in the Compare editor. In the Synchronize view, select a file, right-click and choose Open in Compare Editor. The remote and local files will open in a text editor, with the changes highlighted.

Conflict resolution

If two members of the team check out the same module, make changes to the same BPEL process or service, and check in their changes, a conflict occurs. Try to avoid conflicts by synchronizing often and by trying to ensure that only one person works on a component at a time or assigning ownership of each component to a developer.

Conflicts can be difficult to resolve if a user is unfamiliar with the artifacts because conflict resolution takes place at the level of the XML structure of the underlying files. It is usually better to update with a new version of the artifacts and integrate your changes in the new copy than it is to try to merge conflicts in the XML.

Some files can be flagged as out of sync when they appear to be identical. This condition can occur if the files have different timestamps. Use the Clean Timestamps option in to automatically get rid of these problems.