So yesterday Surround SCM 2008.1 finally hit the street. Well, the internet actually. Let’s call it the internet street. What’s this really means is that I can finally write about the two features I really love but haven’t been able to publicly talk about.

Neither one of these things are huge changes but they made a big difference in my daily life.

*insert joke about my lack of a life here*

Feature Numero Uno: The New Branch Dropdown

For years and years my Surround SCM setup looked something like this:

So I had the branch pane on the left, the repository pane in the middle, and the file list pane on the right. Some people I’ve seen have the file details pane shoved in there somewhere too but I never got into that. It’s just how I roll.

The problem is that if you use lots of branches (which you should) the branch dropdown would have so many items in it that it would be unusable:

In this new version that dropdown isn’t linear anymore, it has a new progressive disclosure tree hierarchy hotness control. That means the branch pane has essentially been shrunk down into snack size dropdown form:

So now I can turn off the branch pane, still have no file details pane, the repositories are get upgraded to the left side instead of the center seat and the file list still gets the window. It’s all much cleaner but with all the same functionality:

Feature Numéro Deux: Reveal in Finder

Anyone who frequents this blog, or for that matter has ever read it, knows that I have serious Apple leanings. That being said it has always bugged the beejerbers out of me that the file list didn’t have a contextual “Reveal in Finder” item. Many a time have I done a get of something, usually some kind of document that is outside of the main source tree, and then had to have a click-fest through Finder to get to it.

For a while I used Quicksilver and I thought I would be all cool and do some ninja moves to avoid the click-fest. In the end I just managed to accidentally email the iTunes executable to someone.

I don’t use Quicksilver anymore. I need to wait until the safety scissors version of it comes out since the real version is too dangerous for me.

All sharp instrument jokes aside “Reveal in Finder” is now available in the context menu:

When you click on it, well, it reveals the file in the Finder:

This also works on platforms other than Mac OS X but it has a different name to fit better with those operating systems. I’d look up what the names were but this is a blog with the word “Monkey” in its title not CNN. Read: If you are looking for hard hitting reporting you’ve probably come to the wrong place.

One final thing to note on this is that for new installations of Surround SCM this item will be in the context menu. For existing installations that are upgraded you’ll need to go into the User Options menu and add it yourself. We argued about this a great deal and finally decided that customers have their context menus set up how they want them already so just jamming a new item in there wouldn’t be proper:

Think of it as our nod to Emily Post.

There are other new features besides these guys too. Those are just the most awesome ones the ones that I like the best.

(And so should you.)

So amid the news coming of Macworld the new version of Office for the Mac was finally shipped by Microsoft. A few days ago a big box filled with all our upgrade versions was delivered to our CIO who, without me needing to ask for it, threw one to me the second I walked into his office.
Now my relationship with Office for the Mac is long and already detailed but I was very much looking forward to the upgrade for three reasons.

1. Entourage 2004 just never worked for me. I couldn’t schedule meetings correctly, it would barf all over itself all the time, the whole thing was a complete disaster. Even if it wouldn’t be feature complete when compared against Outlook I had nowhere to go but up.
2. Word 2004 had some screwy tool bars that for whatever reason just bugged me.
3. It was slow because of the Rosetta translation for the Intel chips.

I am very happy to report that all three of my main complaints have been addressed in this version. Entourage now does work for me, just like it used to for everyone else here in the office. The ability to schedule alone is worth the price of admission especially since Apple decided to let the meeting entry UI of the Leopard iCal marinate in a bowl of liquid mouse clicking stupid before they shipped it.

I know other folks in-house haven’t seen huge speed gains but given my nearly daily usage of Word on massive documents I can definitely tell a difference. The crazy Word toolbars are gone but I suspect that those got swept away in the more modern, and dare I say shiny look, that the entire Office suite got. And that’s really the punch line of the whole upgrade. Yes it is now Intel native, yes it is better looking, but that’s about it for compelling new features. I realize that there are only so many things you can do an office productivity suite at this point but I would have figured that in four years we would have had more than a whole bunch of new layout templates that no one uses anyhow.

Oh, and Entourage still uses the DAV interface to communicate with Exchange. Four years they’ve had to port over the communications code from Outlook. I’ve got the feeling that is a political problem though since all the MacBU people I’ve ever met are more than bright enough to handle that task.

One last thing, for you Mac Surround SCM users out there, the rather controversial move to ditch VBA in favor of AppleScript has yielded dividends. Jeff has written a couple AppleScripts that bring Word document differencing to Surround SCM.

Think of it as our little gift to you, even if the gift is one of those “Man that would really useful for me and if it happens to help out the rest of the world then that would be okey dokey too” types.

So when running the current version (5.0.4 at time of writing) of Surround SCM on Windows Vista there is a little problem. Instead of seeing this:

you end up getting this:

with a demeaning warning that looks like this:

And, well, that just stinks. If you take away the Aero shininess from Vista all you have left is Windows XP with a lot of Allow or Deny popup boxes. Fear not though, here’s how to fix it.

First, let me explain what is going on. Surround SCM uses a product called Guiffy to do its Diff/Merge functionality and Guiffy is written in Java. (Surround SCM is in C++ for the curious.) When the Surround client starts up it creates a JVM so that when you ask for a diff or a merge Guiffy can launch and do all the crunching. Unfortunately, the current version of Surround ships with JRE 1.4 which apparently gets along with Aero as well as Paris gets along with Nicole.

Essentially, when the JRE 1.4 starts Vista throws up its hands in exasperation, says “This is NOT hot” and switches to basic mode.

To fix this, follow this link to Sun’s Java download page and download the JRE 6u1 for Windows.

Once the magic gnomes of the internet have delivered it to your computer install it and stare at this progress screen for a while. (Or maybe go get a drink or a bagel or a bacon sandwich or something.)

Once it is done installing go the Tools menu of the Surround client and select User Options.

From here you are going to need to change the JRE setting from what it currently is:

to what we want it to be, the new Sun JRE. Your install path may vary, but you get the idea. Then just quit the Surround client, start it up again and ta-da you’re set.

So a few weeks back Seapine released Surround SCM 5.0, the first ever SCM system that not only tracks code but also washes your car, cooks you lunch, and if you buy the premium support that goes with it, will hunt down and kill telemarketers just like a Terminator.

All right, that’s not entirely true. Actually, it isn’t even mostly true. Surround SCM does keep track of your source code though. And to that end there is a cool new feature in Surround 5.0 that doesn’t get as much love as the fancy schmancy configurable workflow, the Address bar. Here is a practical demonstration of this new functionality.

So let’s say Yan sends me an instant message that goes something like this:

Yan: d00d, u need to c this l33t code i jst chekD n.

Me: What the hell are you talking about? And where are your capital letters? Back in my day we had shift keys and we liked them.

Yan: wutevA grandpa, jst chek out d code

Me: *Sigh* Alright. What do you want me to see?

Funny side bar to all this IM speak, on my birthday last year we were meeting up with a friend of mine at an outdoor festival that had a local band playing. I get there and my cell phone gets a text message asking where I was. Thinking I’ll be all cool like the kids these days I decide to text back and use the fancy T9 interface.

I figure saying something like “I’ll be right there” would suffice so I start typing away only to send the following:

“Biscuit”

Nothing confuses a text message recipient faster than replying to a question with a type a breakfast pastry. And yes, it was my 30th birthday and my wife made me promise to never try to T9 text again lest I embarrass myself further. Back to the IM’s…

Yan: sscm://localhost:4900/MacMainline/MacMainline/Cybertron/optimus.cpp

I fire up the Surround client, paste that line into the address bar, and it shows me the file in question:

This takes me straight to the file’s location in the system, the branch, the repository, everything. It’s a little pointer to where we are right now without the confusion of where we’ve been. It’s us and the file looking into the future that is unwritten, just like the end of Terminator 2 taught us. That is until Terminator 3 came along and said, “Yeah, about that unwritten future business, sorry, we lied. You’re basically hosed, enjoy the nuclear winter.” Darn killer robots.

A quick view of the file let’s me see his changes:


if (autobots.transform() && rollout())
{
   driveToKickDecepticonAss();
}
else
{
   cutToCommerical();
}


Nodding, I send a message back to Yan…

Me: I like it. It’s subtle, but there is more to it than meets the eye.