12 replies to this topic

[Rob Donovan]

Hi,

A few people have asked me if ProIV IDE will still work in the new ProIV version 6, because of the fact that it edits the native bootstraps.

Version 6 of ProIV will still have the native bootstrap files, although they have been modified to have a new key length to cope with the new function name length.

What it doesnt have is the Native Bootstrap functions, like @MOD, @LOGIC @S etc.

VIP still writes to VIP bootstraps and when you gen and build a VIP function it writes the VIP bootstrap data to the Native bootstrap files, then the ProIV Gen process gens from the native bootstrap files.

So, using ProIV IDE will still be possible, because the Gen and Run still work from the native files.

Hope this clears things up...

Any, questions.... just ask...

Rob D.

[Chris Pepper]

That's very interesting. Thanks for that information. I'm currently trying to plan a migration to 5.5 and would like to keep open the possibility of a further move to 6 should the benefits prove worthwhile.

Since I keep the source code for Functions in ascii files in a code management system and only load it into the bootstraps for editing (and genning), the thought of having to load it through yet another layer just to edit it is maybe a layer too far. Now if VIP could just save and load a function directly to/from XML we might be getting somewhere! (Particularly if it is extensible XML as I'd like to store the version numbers for all the dependencies within the function).

BTW Rob, did you get my email?

[Rob Donovan]

BTW Rob, did you get my email?

Yep.... I'll give you a reply tonight...

Rob.

[Rob Donovan]

I'm also planning to enhance IDE to load and save functions purely to/from text files and/or XML files.

As a few people are requesting that, so that they can intergrate to their version control systems.

Rob D.

[Wim Soutendijk]

Rob,

If you don't write the code to the VIP files for version 6 but only to the native bootstrap files, we would not be able to see the changes made to a program from your IDE within PRO-IV.
Could be dangerous.
If you rebuild the function from VIP, you can lose all changes made in VIP...

[Rob Donovan]

Hi,

The people who use my IDE dont use VIP what so ever, so that would not be a problem for them.

When using ProIV IDE, there is no need to use VIP.

Currently I'm not writting to the VIP bootstraps. This is because it will slow down IDE and also cause more bugs because there is a duplication of the data.

Currently there is no one who has asked for support of VIP and IDE in one environment.

If there is I may look into updating the VIP boots, but currently its just not worth it.

BTW, why do you say it 'Could be dangerous'?

Rob.

[Wim Soutendijk]

I think it is dangerous to potentially have 2 different versions of the same source code.
To load up an existing function in 6.0, I guess you would have to make use of the VIP import utility, and then have VIP built the native source code.
If you then only change the native source code, a rebuild from VIP would delete those changes.

[Rob Donovan]

I dont think its great to have 2 versions of the source code either.

But ProIV LTD aready do it with VIP any way, and SuperLayer was the same. I cannot understand why VIP was written to use a copy of the bootstrap data. Its pointless and bad desgin.

I cant really control what they do, so I have to work alone and around this.

If you are using ProIV IDE, there is no point loading up your source code into VIP.

In version 6.0, IDE will import a native PRX from version 5 into the native boots in version 6. This is a new option I have to code, but is nothing that is too complex.

So you would not have to use VIPs import, and therefor the ProIV code would be in native only.

The whole point of using ProIV IDE, is not to use VIP....

Also, just for safty, if you have a function that is in VIP, if you edit it in ProIV IDE, then it warns you that if you rebuild from VIP you will loose you changes.

Unless anyone can come up with anthing better, apart from updating the VIP boots , I would be very interested...

Rob.

[tclulow]

Though this is not an issue for IDE, I thought I'd point out that our brief dalliance with VIP revealed (amongst many faults) that it extracts the function description (FDESC) when importing to VIP but fails to maintain it in native from that point on. Worse, any build from VIP deletes the FDESC in native.


Tony.

[Rob Donovan]

Yep , no idea why it does that...

If you do loose them though, through this way, VIPs copy of FDESC is VIPBM13.

You can ALIAS your FDESC filedef to VIPBM13 and read it directly if you want. Then you can copy your deleted records back. Because its the same def.

Rob.

[Joseph Bove]

Rob,

Unless anyone can come up with anthing better, apart from updating the VIP boots  , I would be very interested...

Why not just delete the VIP bootstraps for the function?

It's much less work and will simply force VIP to load the function from Native.

Regards,

Joseph

[Mike Nicholson]

That would keep the 2 code bases in line but loading a function into VIP for the first time from native used to take an awfully long time (not sure if it still does - I don't use VIP at the moment). Like 10 minutes plus a throw. I know we had a couple that would take upwards of 20 minutes. No idea why it took that long !!

You start maintaining a lot of functions like that and half your day's gone!!

Cheers

Mike

[Rob Donovan]

Hi,

Yes, doing an upload into VIP takes a ridicules amount of time, and is something that would slow down IDE too much.

One of the reasons that VIP is so slow is because of its over use of Global functions everywhere.

I will be looking into the possibility of updating VIP boots, because people have asked me to get IDE working with them so they can use IDE.

But since the code is still stored down at the native level, and genning and running is done there I see very little point it having 2 copies of the source code at this point.

Rob.