2003-04-10 - 4:38 p.m.

Sorry to readers who aren't so technical but this entry is going to kinda seem hard to follow I think.

This morning started with the gelatinous and repugnant Mr Pink and Ms Psycho. (I have decided Mr. Pink actually looks a bit like sculpted blubbery spam with a face drawn on top.) They mostly strung acronyms together with verbs so I really had no idea what they were talking about. They handed me some stack of crap with hand written scribbles all over it and that is supposed to pass for revised specs that are due in 4 days. Yeah, that's gonna happen. There was a time when I might have actually tried to make that happen but that time has passed.

I did pay some effort to the cause of getting a few things doing. I started messing around with the code, taking my best guesses as to what should be changed based on the illegible scribbles I had to go on. I noticed a few of my files didn't match the print outs I had so I decided I'd better get the latest version of the files. (We use CVS which is software that keeps version controlled copies of files developers need in a central location.) Any way, I go to get the latest files and suddenly everything is broken. Well that's no good. My first thought is that some one checked broken files into CVS (possible although a cardinal sin).

I figured Psycho would know what was going on so I messaged her (yeah I know, just asking for punishment there) to ask her why the versions of the files in the version control software broke my stuff. She told me some of the file directories had been branched and that I should get my files out of the branches. Branches are copies of the directory structure that you separate from the main directories if you are doing a major update but want to keep a working copy of the last approved version of an application available for emergency small on the fly changes.

Any way in an ideal world this would be your directory structure:

Root
�� � � � + Members
� �� � � � � � � - users
� � � � � � � � � - organizations
� � � � � � � � � - experts
� � � � � + Templates
� � � �� � � � � - simple
� � � �� � � � � - layouts
� � � � � � � � � - inserts
� � �� � + Records
� � � � � � �� � - users
� � � � � � � � � - simple
� � � � � � � � � - complex
� � � � � � � + archived
� � � � � � � � � � � � � - active
� � � �� � � � � � � � � - inactive

And your branch would look identical to that. You'd have Branched_Root instead of root and then everything in there would be the same. You don't necessarily have to have every directory in Branched_Root that you'd have to have in Root but if you did have any of Root's directories they'd follow the structure Root uses.

Any way I go into the branches folder and here is what it looks like:

Branched_Root
� � � + Members
� � � � � � -simple
� � � � � � -users
� � � � � � -organizations

I spent 2 hours back and forth with Psycho trying to make sense of this. Apparently, and no doubt after smoking a lot of crack, some one decided to do the following mappings:

Branched_Root/Members == Root
Branched_Root/Members/simple == Root/Records/simple
Branched_Root/Members/users == Branched_Root/Records/users
Branched_Root/Members/organizations == Branched_Root/Members/organizations

And people still wonder why deadlines and budgets are so fucked up?

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