The detailed procedure of Merge Down, Copy Up is explained on Slide 22 of the talk. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in the presence of files with expanded keywords (type text+k). All these files don’t get reverted in step 4 (p4 diff -sr | p4 -x - revert), although they differ only in keyword expansion.

There is currently no direct way using Perforce commands to work around this problem. However, the p4 diff commands to plug in a different diff tool. My solution on Windows therefore consists of two scripts, one to set up P4DIFF and call p4 diff (revert_unchanged.bat), the other as the plug in diff tool (diff_no_keywords.bat). The scripts need a couple of additional filters like diff, grep and cut. While the cygwin grep is fine, you must not use its diff and cut binaries, because these are too much unixish and have problems with the backslash path delimiters that p4 diff is handing out (or you could perhaps use the cygwin variant of p4, if you have a current one). I have used the binaries from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/.

Both scripts are available from the Perforce Public Depot: revert_unchanged.bat, diff_no_keywords.bat. You use them as additional step 4a after the p4 diff -sr step.

In comes a little tool called envvc.exe. It sets the environment for the chosen version and then calls any chosen executable. As additional feature it verifies that you have installed the latest service pack for the chosen version.

Supported configurations:

• VC 6, example:
  

  envvc 60 cl ...
  Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 12.00.8804 for 80

  x86
  ...

• VC 7.1 (VS 2003). Example (without the current SP1, simulating an error message):
  

  envvc -f 71 cl ...
  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\install.htm(1) : error SP: there's a newer service pack available!
  Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 13.10.3077 for 80

  x86
  ...

• VC 8 (VS 2005) Example:
  

  envvc 80 cl ...
  Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.762 for 80

  x86
  ...

• VC 8 with the .NET 3 SDK. Example:
  

  envvc fx 80 svcutil ...
  Microsoft (R) Service Model Metadata Tool
  [Microsoft (R) Windows (R) Communication Foundation, Version 3.0.4506.30]
  ...

No configuration is needed for envvc; all informations about where the compilers are installed and which service packs have been applied are read from the Windows Registry. But the known service packs are hard coded, so you have to patch envvc whenever Microsoft releases another service pack.

The source to envvc is available under the Boost Software License (local copy): envvc.cpp. Feedback is appreciated!

Ich gratuliere dem ADP-Team von Kaba-Gilgen für diesen Erfolg und freue mich, dass damit auch die Arbeit von Hug-Witschi den Weg nach Paris findet. Hug-Witschi hat im Auftrag von Kaba-Gilgen die Steuerung (Hardware und erste Version der Software) der einzelnen Türeinheiten entwickelt.

Later we kept using dmake for the software for our DIVA and CCI/CSI interface families. The build system had grown quite complex and the makefiles made heavy use of the percent pattern rules and delegation to makefiles in other directories.

A couple of years ago, when I first tried to define a target that builds everything (several firmware variants, debug and release builds), I encountered a strange error from dmake:

dmake.exe:  Error: -- Unable to change to directory `xy?', target is [sub-b]

The latest release then (dmake 4.1) was labeled as “final free release”; the last dmake homepage from Dennis Vadura (dmake.wticorp.com, online ca. 2001), once tried to sell “dmake Gold”, but was already unreachable at this time. As the days of open source dmake seemed over, I was hesitating to invest time finding bugs and thought that we would move soon to another build system anyway.

Recently (we’re still using dmake…) I have learned that OpenOffice.org has “adopted” dmake and resumed its development. This gave me the energy to finally hunt down this bug: a dangling pointer.

Until my fix is integrated into a future dmake release, you can get the patch from the OpenOffice Issue Tracker.