Who we are

We are the developers of Plastic SCM, a full version control stack (not a Git variant). We work on the strongest branching and merging you can find, and a core that doesn't cringe with huge binaries and repos. We also develop the GUIs, mergetools and everything needed to give you the full version control stack.

If you want to give it a try, download it from here.

We also code SemanticMerge, and the gmaster Git client.

Plastic 3.0.7 is out!!

Monday, November 01, 2010 Pablo Santos , 1 Comments

Together with the launch of the new Community Edition we're announcing a new version ready to be downloaded: 3.0.7! And it comes loaded with new features: new Visual Studio integration and Mylyn integration for Eclipse users.


Our policy is to release a couple of major releases a year, but our dev team is so active and there are so many ideas floating around that we need to publish new features more often than that.

That’s why after we released 3.0 a few months back, instead of just “retaining” new features for the next major version, we’re just publishing them on a frequently basis.

And that’s why today I’m announcing a good number of new features in 3.0.6, together with some fixes and customers requests.

You can find all the details in the release notes, but let me explain in a little more depth what’s 3.0.7 is about.

New Visual Studio integration package


Visual Studio is one of the most used IDEs by Plastic SCM users out there and that’s why we’re trying to continuously improve our integration with it. As part of the new release, we’re introducing a new Visual Studio Package for Visual Studio 2005 and higher. The new package allows our customers to implement full SCM operations.

Why are we coming up with a new package? Here are the reasons:


  • We had originally offered very basic SCC integration, which is still maintained and enables compatibility with older versions of Visual Studio. However, getting rid of the old SCC limitations which will enable us to continue evolving the integration rapidly and without meaningless restrictions.
  • We are now able to add more integrated functionality: checkin behavior is now shared with the GUI, the same happens with the access to all the GUI views and so on.
  • We have created a better base to continue evolving plugins and enable more innovative functionalities. We’re considering a bunch of ideas to extract info in real time from the SCM and make it available while the programmer is coding, helping him to make the right decisions. Stay tuned because there will be a lot more coming.

    Now let me describe in bigger detail how the new package looks like

    Configuring the new Version Control Package


    Going to Tools/Options you’ll be able to select the new “Source Control Package.” Keep in mind that you can choose from the old SCC or the new one, it’s up to you!


    New context menus available



    Thanks to the new integration we were able to include much more functionality in the Visual Studio IDE.
    Look at the new context menu options that were simply not available before, like annotating code or showing up history and tree 3D (before only the tree was available).



    All the views in the Plastic GUI are also available from View/Plastic SCM menu (it was there also in the former 2005 package, but now we added a “workspace explorer” too).



    Integrated history


    Several users requested it in the past and in fact it is something we must have added long ago. But finally the history of an item can be browsed from within Visual Studio.



    Integrated annotate


    The annotate is now available within the Visual Studio IDE.


    New pending changes view


    The checkin window is now shared with the GUI, displaying the “pending changes” dialog.



    Integrated diff


    We’ve made several changes in the diff infrastructure for 3.0.7 and now there’s a new configuration page on the wizard to let you set up the diff tools.



    You can choose the “embedded diff viewer” (new) or the Plastic SCM diff tool (the default) or set up your own diff tool.
    In case you go for the “embedded” one the diffs will be displayed as follows in the GUI and Visual Studio.





    Hope you enjoy the changes!!!
    Pablo Santos
    I'm the CTO and Founder at Códice.
    I've been leading Plastic SCM since 2005. My passion is helping teams work better through version control.
    I had the opportunity to see teams from many different industries at work while I helped them improving their version control practices.
    I really enjoy teaching (I've been a University professor for 6+ years) and sharing my experience in talks and articles.
    And I love simple code. You can reach me at @psluaces.

    • Pablo Santos

    1 comment:

    1. AndréNovember 2, 2010 at 8:30 AM

      Very nice!

      About those integrated screens: are these also available for the
      Plastic4Delphi plugin?
      (http://code.google.com/p/plastic4delphi/)

      ReplyDelete

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