Crouching tiger, coding monkey

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.)