Using the StarTeam Integration
Borland's StarTeam integration for Delphi 2005 provides direct access to StarTeam features and functions from within the IDE. The StarTeam integration lets you use Delphi 2005 menus or embedded StarTeam Client elements to manage access to projects and files stored in the server repository, to maintain an audit trail of changes you make to the projects and files, and to resolve file revision conflicts. The function and use of the StarTeam Client and the elements incorporated into Delphi 2005 are documented in detail in the StarTeam User's Guide and the StarTeam Administrator's Guide. StarTeam is a powerful tool, with comprehensive version control features and capabilities. We strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the StarTeam documentation before using this integration. All StarTeam documentation is available for download from the Borland web site at http://info.borland.com/techpubs/starteam/ [url=ms-help://borland.bds3/bds3guide/images/Link_WEB.jpg].
How Delphi 2005 Interacts with StarTeam
StarTeam consists of server and client components. On the server side, the StarTeam Server maintains a database repository that captures a complete snapshot of the source files in your project and incremental changes (deltas or differences) to those files. The StarTeam client is integrated seamlessly with Delphi 2005. You can place projects into and pull projects out of your source control repository, and check in, check out, merge, and compare files.
Note: The StarTeam integration for Delphi 2005 supports StarTeam 5.4, 6.0 and 2005 Servers. You must have the StarTeam Windows Client installed on your system, or some StarTeam features, such as Visual Merge and Visual Diff, will not be available.
StarTeam Client
The StarTeam integration for Delphi 2005 includes a StarTeam Client for the .NET Framework. You can launch the full StarTeam Client, or view the client as embedded elements of the IDE. These embedded StarTeam elements provide access to most of the commands and information available in the client's main window (also called the Project View Window). The StarTeam Client provided with Delphi 2005 does not include the Visual Diff and Visual Merge utilities for comparing and merging revisions of files. These utilities are available with the StarTeam Windows Client, and if you have the StarTeam Windows Client installed, the StarTeam integration can use these utilities. Alternatively, you can configure the integrated StarTeam Client to use different comparison and merge utilities. The StarTeam client provided with the Delphi integration can only be started from within Delphi. There are no provisions for using StarTeam's command-line interface with the StarTeam integration for Delphi. With the exception of the aforementioned items, the features supported by your StarTeam installation are supported by the Delphi 2005 integration. For example, if you have StarTeam Standard, which does not support tasks, requirements, or alternate property editors (APEs), the StarTeam integration for Delphi 2005 will not support tasks, requirements, or APEs. If you have StarTeam Enterprise, which supports tasks, your StarTeam integration will support tasks. If you have StarTeam Enterprise Advantage, your StarTeam integration will support tasks, requirements, and APEs. For more information about StarTeam, including a feature matrix, see the StarTeam product page on the Borland web site at http://www.borland.com/starteam/index.html [url=ms-help://borland.bds3/bds3guide/images/Link_WEB.jpg].
Standard Version Control Support
The StarTeam integration provides support for standard version control operations. Using the integrated StarTeam Client, you can perform the following operations:
Delphi 2005 provides access to these operations through the StarTeam menu on the main menu bar, or through StarTeam context menus in the Project Manager.
Advanced Features
The integrated StarTeam Client lets you access advanced StarTeam features without leaving the development environment. Some of these include:
These features will help you assign and track responsibilities for tasks throughout your project. The client that can be launched from within Delphi 2005 provides even more features and functions for managing your files and projects, such as the ability to generate reports and charts, and administer user accounts and servers.
Delphi 2005 Features
Some features and behaviors of the StarTeam integration are specific to Delphi 2005. Beyond the embedded client, the most obvious of these is the support for Delphi 2005 projects and project groups. The StarTeam integration provides commands for placing, pulling, and updating Delphi 2005 projects and project groups, as well as for committing changes to all files in a project. Additionally, the integration provides quick access to StarTeam commands through context menus in the Project Manager. The StarTeam integration works together with the Delphi 2005 History Manager to display both local and StarTeam version information for the active file. You can use the History Manager to compare the contents of your current working file with revisions of the file in the StarTeam repository. You can also revert the contents of your working file to any StarTeam revision. The StarTeam integration supports file renaming and deleting. When you rename or delete a file in your project, the StarTeam integration will automatically carry out the changes on the repository when you commit the project. Similarly, if a team member has renamed or deleted files, and committed the changes, the changes are carried out in your local project when you update the project. This capability prevents loss of revision information when a file is renamed or moved.
Note: If the file renaming or deletions made in your local project conflict with changes made by another team member in the StarTeam Client, you must manually resolve the pending renaming or deletion of files. The Pending Renames/Deletes dialog box ( StarTeam Pending Renames/Deletes) lets you commit any pending local file renames or deletions to the repository or cancel the pending operations.
When the Structure View displays the folder hierarchy for your StarTeam project, the Structure View includes a toolbar with the following features:
