One of the features we're adding into the next version of OnTime is source control integration. As we near completion on this feature, I thought I'd take some time to give a small preview of how this will work. I would love to do a preview release to get this into your hands, but I don't think we'll be able to do that outside of our actual beta, so the screenshots will have to do.
(Throughout this, I will use the term SCM to mean Source Control Management).
You can manage your SCM settings on a per-project basis:
OnTime uses a plugin-style architecture for SCM configuration. When OnTime v6 ships, we will support (at a minimum) VSS and SourceGear vault. (If you're reading this and you use something different, tell me! (remove NOSPAM for better email delivery)).
Since we use Vault here at Axosoft, we'll start there:
Rather than go with an API-based approach, we decided to use the command line clients for VSS and Vault (Vault has an API, but it's not frozen, and SourceSafe's requires an NDA just to see). Since every other source control tool that I'm aware of uses a command line client in some way, we decided this would be the best route to take. In fact, SourceGear seemed to anticipate someone doing this, their command line client returns XML! Subversion's command line client also appears to have an option to return XML. So if you do use a different source control provider, you can choose to implement the interface we've defined and write your own plugin for OnTime (contact me for more details).
So on this screen, you would need to provide the location of your vault command line client, as well as your authentication information for your vault server. (You can also optionally provide the path to the Vault GUI client, so that it can be launched from within OnTime).
Unlike SourceSafe, Vault can have multiple repositories for a single installation (SourceSafe's method of handling multiple databases is a little different, so their configuration screens will look a little different). On the next screen, you must select a repository, and you can also select a default folder for the project you are working on.
In my next post, I'l look at adding links between items within OnTime and items in your configured source control provider.
Edit: Part 2 is up here.