AccuRev GUI User’s Quick Guide

You’ll be able to accomplish most of your AccuRev work with four simple commands: Keep, Update, Merge and Promote.

Resources

•  pdf - AccuRev User’s Guide (GUI Edition)
•  videos - AccuRev ELearning Videos

Edit files

Initially all files have status (backed)— the version in the workspace stream is the same as the version in the backing stream. And you have not changed the elements.

After editing some file and saving your changes to the file, you may need to invoke the View > Refresh command in the GUI window, in order to update the files’ status flags. Function key F5 is a keyboard shortcut to this command. After that the file’s status changes to (modified).

You can edit the file (and update the File Browser display) as many times as you wish. The file’s status remains (modified).

Keep - Preserving Changes in Your Private Workspace

To have AccuRev record a new version of the file, invoke the  Keep command on it.

If you wish, enter a comment in the dialog box that appears. The comment string becomes a permanent annotation to the version, viewable with the History Browser.

The Keep command creates a new version of the file in the workspace stream. This version is said to record a content change to the file. AccuRev also tracks namespace changes — see below.

The file’s status changes to (kept)(member); this indicates that you’ve recorded a new version, and that the file is currently active in your workspace (is a member of the workspace’s default group).

The Version column shows the version-ID of the newly created version. Note that this version is recorded in your private workspace stream (in this example, talon_dvt_john, in our case it can be wtk.feature.apd2_firstname.lastname); previously the Version column indicated that your workspace contained a version from the public backing stream (talon, in our case it can be wtk.feature.apd2).

You can continue modifying the file with the  Edit command, and saving new versions in the depot with the   Keep command. The file’s status will alternate between (modified)(member) and (kept)(member). The persistence of the (member) indicator reflects the fact that the file remains active in your workspace until you promote your changes to the backing stream or undo your changes. These operations are described below.

Update - Get Others’ Changes into Your Workspace

This operation is performed by the   Update command.

This figure shows the Update toolbar button. You can also invoke this command as File > Update from the main menu.

So an update operation on your workspace copies versions of certain files from the backing stream to the workspace, overwriting/replacing the files currently in your workspace.

But Update won’t overwrite active files (that you have kept), even if there’s a new version of it in the backing stream. This situation is called an overlap: two users working at the same time on the same files. (see Merge)

Merge - When Changes Would Collide

For files that you need to merge, (overlap) appears in the Status column. To make sure you notice, the File Browser displays the entry with a yellow highlight.

This figure shows how to invoke the Merge command from a file’s context (right-click) menu in the File Browser. You can also invoke  Merge with the toolbar button.

Often, a merge operation is easy, and so can be performed automatically. The graphical Merge tool for resolving the conflicts looks like:

After performing a merge, AccuRev automatically Keeps the merged version to preserve the results of the merge operation. You can then Promote the merged version to the backing stream. After that, other team members can use Update — or perhaps Merge — to bring all the changes into their workspaces.

Promote - Making Your Private Changes Public

When you’re ready to share your changes to a file with your colleagues, you Promote the active version from your workspace stream to the backing stream.

This makes your changes available to all workspaces that are based on the same backing stream.

Note how the version-ID in the Version column changes:

• Before the promotion, it indicates the particular version of the file that is active in your workspace (in this example, version talon_dvt_john\5).

• After the promotion, it indicates that version’s newly created version-ID in the backing stream (in this example, talon_dvt\8).Having been promoted, the file is no longer active in the workspace (is no longer in the default group of the workspace stream). Accordingly, it loses its (member) status and returns to being (backed) — its original status before you started working on the file. That is, the workspace returns to “inheriting” the version of the file currently in the backing stream — which happens to be the version you just promoted there!

Note: strictly speaking, you must Keep a file’s changes before you can Promote them. But as a convenience, the File Browser enables the Promote command for files that are (modified), but not (kept). Invoking Promote performs both a keep transaction and a promote transaction.

Revert - discard the changes

• The   Revert to Backed command undoes all the content and/or namespace changes you’ve made to an active file. The file’s status reverts to (backed), and your workspace “rolls back” to using the version that it contained the last time the file’s status was (backed). It might be a version that your brought into your workspace with a recent Update command; or it might be a version that you created in your workspace, then Promoted to the backing stream.

Note: if your changes to a file included moving it to a different directory, invoking Revert to Backed causes the file to disappear from its new location and return to its original location.

• A file’s context menu (but not the File Browser’s toolbar) also contains a variant command,  Revert to Most Recent Version.

 For each file element with (modified) status, replace the file with the most recent version you created with Keep. Use this command when you’ve saved one or more intermediate versions of the file(s), and you want to discard the changes you’ve made since a Keep. The selected elements remain active in the workspace. The (modified) status of the elements changes to (kept).