Ivercy - The Perspective for 2019
- Posted in:
- Ivercy
- Source Code Control
- Microsoft Access
- MSSCCI
This is an update on the current state of Ivercy. I share some things we worked on in the recent past, things we are working on right now, and a hint of future ideas. - And, there is a new beta version released.
Long time, no see
During the last months we received a couple of inquiries if Ivercy is still supported and actively maintained and when there will be a new version out and the likes.
I can understand the reasoning behind these questions very well. The last production version of Ivercy was only a small bug fix release after 18 months of no public release at all. This is a very long time and it might indicate that a software product is (nearly) dead.
The positive side to this is, there were no significant bugs found in Ivercy (except the one that triggered V1.2.5) that would have required a bug fix release.
While I’m very proud of there being no severe bugs in Ivercy, there are still lots of issues that definitely are annoying and should be improved. We voiced our dedication to improving things repeatedly but without committing to any date for a new and improved public release.
Beyond MSSCCI - Ivercy BETA Version 1.3.10 released!
Despite all the above, we have not been inactive regarding Ivercy in that long time.
It was a key feature and requirement for Ivercy from the start that we use Microsoft’s MSSCCI-API as a general interface to any version control software (in theory) instead of concrete implementation of the APIs of distinct systems.
This allowed us to support a variety of systems like Team Foundation Server, Visual SourceSafe, Sourcegear Vault, Source Anywhere, and several others with the same feature set as the Microsoft SCC-Plugin for Access right from the start. Even in hindsight, this was the right decision to get a broad basic support of a variety of common source code control systems.
However, there were a couple of drawbacks with that approach. There was no reliable Git-MSSCCI-Provider available while Git was gaining more and more attention in the developer community. The Subversion MSSCCI-Providers where somewhat lacking, particularly in performance, and finally Microsoft decided to remove the required components for their TFS-MSSCCI-Provider from current versions of Visual Studio/Team Explorer, forcing Ivercy users to additionally install VS/TE 2013 to get the Ivercy system requirements for TFS connectivity.
To address these issues, we underwent a major redesign in Ivercy’s core architecture to move from the close coupling to the MSSCCI-API to a more flexible and pluggable architecture. This has become available with the Ivercy Versions 1.3.* quite some time ago already, but it was only available to certain customers upon request.
Today we released Ivercy Version 1.3.10 as a beta release download to the general public.
This release is a bit of hybrid version regarding its beta state. If you use the MSSCCI-Connectivity to your SCC-Backend, this version should be production-ready, and you can use it with little concern. But keep in mind, that internally there were huge changes to the internal plugging and there is a possibility of bugs nobody has spotted yet.
Improved Subversion Support with SharpSVN
The first actual connectivity implementation using this new pluggable infrastructure is available now! It’s a new, optional connectivity to Subversion using SharpSVN (an open source library). This should significantly improve the performance of Ivercy with Subversion.
This is in use by select early adopters for quite some time and it should be reasonably stable for production use. – However, a wider user base will surely find some problems that where not noticed before.
Team Foundation Server connectivity without MSSCCI?
Microsoft has made it more complicate to use the MSSCCI-Provider for TFS, by removing the required base libraries from current versions of Visual Studio and TFS-Team-Explorer.
Despite Microsoft assuring us that they are dedicated to support the MSSCCI-Technology in the future, it’s still quite a nuisance to many of our customers and to us that they are making it harder to use it.
We are currently investigating options to connect Ivercy to Microsoft TFS without using the MSSCCI-API. – This is also something that has only become possible by switching to the new internal architecture.
Current shortcomings of the new Ivercy architecture
What is currently is lacking, is the appeal of some UI elements in that regard. With the MSSCCI-API it was the responsibility of the MSSCCI-Provider to also provide user dialogs to establish a connection, filter the history, display history-query-results, and so on.
When not using an existing MSSCCI-Provider to connect to a source code control backend, all those integrated UI elements are not available any more. So, we need to create our own. This is harder than you might think at first. Different version control systems use different concepts, different terminology and structure information quite differently. We need to account for that but still try to create universal interfaces to accommodate all different systems.
So, admitted, our user interface in the new SharpSVN-Subversion interface is very, very basic and provides only a minimal functionality while not looking pretty.
Further plans…
We’ve got many other ideas to extend and improve Ivercy. - One could be obvious, if you read between the lines of this text. – But still I refrain from committing to any schedule. Nevertheless, be assured that Ivercy will not only supported in its current state but also enhanced with new features in the future.