ionForge Evolution Source Control System - Simply Better Source Control

Question: How often does ionForge release updates for Evolution and what increment of the update is recommended to be installed?
Answer: ionForge releases a major update for Evolution every 6 months. We also release minor updates for bug fixes and simple feature requests in between the major ones.

Question: Where is the Evolution database (default: Access) and file repository located? How can I backup the Evolution database and file repository?
Answer: The Evolution's database is called "ds.mdb" by default and the file repository is called "CSFileRoot." Both of these items are located in the directory where the server is installed (default path is C:\ Program Files\ionForge\ionForge Server). To back up the database and file repository, make a copy of both of these items. Periodically backing up both the database and file repository is highly recommended.

Installation and Licensing

Information about the installation process and installing, updating or renewing licenses.

Question: How do I install a license file?
Answer: If you received a compressed file (.zip), extract the new license file and store it in a directory different from where the server currently resides. The installation of the new license file will fail if the directories of the license file and the Evolution Server installation directory are the same. Next, open the ionForge Server Manager and select the License tab at the top. Click on Install New License File and locate the new license file in the browse window.

Question: How do I enable Photoshop integration?
Answer: In the Evolution client, click on in the View menu, and select Options. Enable Evolution integrations by clicking on the "Make Evolution your default source control provider" checkbox. If you do not see the Evolution menu in Photoshop, you can also copy the "ionForge Evolution for Photoshop.8li" file into your Plug-ins folder of your Photoshop installation folder. The Evolution plug-in supports Adobe Photoshop 6, 7, and 8(CS).

Question: What operating systems can Evolution run on?
Answer: The Evolution client can run on Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP. The server can only run on Windows 2000 or later.

Question: How do I get support or report a bug? How do I request a new feature?
Answer: Click HERE for more information on the support and contact options available, or click HERE to visit our forums where you can get immediate help with your problems or submit a feature request or bug report.

Question: How to I enable Caligari gameSpace integration?
Answer: First run gameSpace, then click on the "Install new gameSpace eXtension" button. Browse to the evolution.tsx file in your Evolution install folder. This is by default located at c:\program files\ionForge\ionForge Evolution.

Question: How do I start and stop the Evolution server?
Answer: There are two ways to handle this.

Stopping only the server

- Click on the Start menu, go to Programs > ionForge > Server Manager. Go to the Server Control tab, and click the Stop Server button.

Stopping all Evolution services

- First make sure all Evolution related applications are closed (the client, any administration tools, etc), they will not operate without the supporting services running. Click on the Start menu, go to Settings > Control Panel > Administive Tools > Services. Stop both the "ionForge Document Server" and "ionForge Property Manager Server" services by selecting them and clicking the "Stop the service" link or right clicking on them and selecting the "Stop" option.

Question: I want to store the server's database and physical file data on a drive other than the default where the server application is installed. How do I do this?
Answer: Currently, there is no automatic way to accomplish this. However, it can be done manually.

The database: Evolution uses an ODBC datasource to connect to your database of choice (by default ). To change the database location, where metadata is stored, you will need to change the settings through ODBC. Click on the Start Menu, then go to Settings > Control Panel > Administive Tools > Data Sources (ODBC). Click on the System tab. Choose the ionForgeDS datasource and click the Configure button. Make your desired changes here.
The physical file data: The Evolution server decides this location by reading its settings from the global.dat file. You can specify the path to where the physical file data is stored in the GlobalProperties/RootFileDirectory setting there. To change the data in the global.dat file for the server (c:\Program Files\ionForge\ionForge Server\globat.dat by default), see this FAQ item.

Basics

Includes information about setting up users, adding assets to the repository, checking them in and out and basic tasks.

Question: I just installed the Evolution server and client, and when I start up the client, it asks me for a username and password. How do I set up user accounts for Evolution?
Answer: Users and User groups are set up through the User Manager. Start up the User Manager and locate the two folders in the right panel called Groups and Users. User groups should be set up first, so open the Groups folder (an Administrator group is created by default), right click on the empty space in the right panel, select New Group, and insert the appropriate data for the group to be created in the new window. Now, open up the Users folder, right click on the empty space in the right panel, and select New User. Enter in the appropriate data and select the group the user is to be a member of from the drop down menu at the bottom of the new window. Once the groups and users have been set up, start the client and enter in the correct username and password to log in.

Question: I just installed both the Evolution server and client, but I can't log in. I keep getting "The server is not running or you have entered an invalid server address" error message. What's wrong?
Answer: Make sure that the necessary services for Evolution are currently running. Restart the computer to have them automatically start up. To start them manually, open the Services window by going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services and locate the two services called "ionForge Document Server" and "ionForge Property Manager Server." If the statuses of the two services do not indicate that they are currently running, right click on them and select Start. If one or both of them are missing, re-install the Evolution server. Another likely problem could be that the either the port number or the server address is incorrect. Double check the server address to make sure it is valid and spelled correctly. The default port number is 4224. If the global.dat has been modified to configure Evolution to use a new port number, remember to restart the property manager.

Question: I'm getting a client/server mismatch error while trying to log in. What does the error mean? Is an older version of the client compatible with a more recent version of the server and vice versa?
Answer: This error means that the client is trying to connect to a server of a different version. Evolution requires the version number of the client and the server to be the same. To resolve the problem, go HERE to download the most recent version of the Evolution client and server.

Question: How can I recover a password?
Answer: Passwords to user accounts cannot be recovered. However, the administrator or anyone who has access to the User Manager can reset them if needed. Start the User Manager, open the User folder, and right click on the appropriate user. Select Set Password from the menu and enter the new password in the new window.

Question: Why is my file repository taking up so much disk space?
Answer: Evolution stores all files and their versions in the file repository. Even though only the deltas on file revisions are stored, a large amount of data is still saved if numerous files are modified many times. For example, if a particular project contains 100 files with each file having been modified 100 times, then there is potential for 1000 deltas to be stored in the file repository. Furthermore, these files can be image, video or sound files (such as jpeg, avi, wav, etc), and files of these types are usually large in size. Files that have been deleted from the client are not removed from the file repository. This is done to increase flexibility so that the user can retrieve and add the file back to the system at a later date if it is deleted by mistake. Hence, as time goes on, the file repository can become quite large. To remove a particular file from the system and file repository, the user needs to use the feature called Obliterate. Note that there are restrictions to what files can be obliterated.

Question: How come when I check out a file and then check it back in, the version number doesn't increase? How come when I check in a file as Work in Progress, the status of the file remains Current and not as a Work in Progress.
Answer: The file needs to be edited. Checking out the file and then simply checking it back in unedited will not affect the status and the version number of the file.

Features

Information about specific Evolution features.

Question: What are the different types of encryption that Evolution uses?
Answer: Evolution uses two types of encryption: AES encryption and DES encryption. Switching encryption and turning it on/off can be done in the Server Manager. The default is no encryption since the server is required to do more work when encryption is on. However, it is recommended to have it on when Evolution is going over an insecure network or over the Internet.

Question: What databases does Evolution support?
Answer: Evolution uses ODBC to connect to data sources, so technically any Datasource with an ODBC driver can be used. However, ionForge only officially supports Access, mySQL and Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) because they have gone through testing whereas others have not. The default database is Access (Jet).

Question: How does Evolution store binary data?
Answer: To avoid repeatedly saving redundant data, Evolution only stores the delta information on file revisions. The most recent version is always available, and previous historical versions are retrieved through backwards delta'ing from the tip revision. For example, if there are 10 versions of a file, to retrieve the third version, seven deltas are needed to be performed from the tip revision to rebuild the third version of the file ( v10 -> v9 -> v8 -> v7 -> v6 -> v5 -> v4 -> v3). The ionForge server also uses the concept of a "reference file" in that a full copy of the file is stored for every X number of revisions. The "reference file" is needed to optimize retrieval of earlier versions of a file so that the server does not need to perform 999 diff operations to generate the file data if there are 1000 versions of the file. The default is that a reference file is saved every 5 versions, but the user can configure this setting through the Server Manager. So in the previous example with 10 versions and an attempt to get version three, you would have v10 -> v5 -> v4 -> v3 instead.

Question: Why is my check-in taking so long for large files? What is CRC?
Answer: Evolution uses a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC), a type of hash function that produces a checksum, to detect modifications to files in productions. During a check-in, a CRC value will be computed for the file, and it will then be compared with the CRC value of the copy in the server to determine if the checked in file has been modified. CRC calculations for large files can take a long time since every byte of the file must be read. Using CRCs to detect file modifications is slow, but it is far more accurate than other methods such as comparisons of file system modification times.

Question: How come when I try to obliterate a file, it says the file is in use? Can I completely remove a file from the repository?
Answer: Obliterating a file not only deletes a file from a production, but it also removes it from the file repository. Obliteration of a file is not allowed when a production in which the file is in has more than one version. For example, if file "x" is in a production called "y" that has more than one version, then obliteration of file "x" is not allowed. This does not mean, however, that the user cannot obliterate a particular file if the file has more than 1 version and it is in a production that has not been versioned yet.

Advanced Evolution

Information about advanced topics such as complex workflow management and multiserver sites.

Question: I found the global.dat and user.dat files and they seem to contain my settings, but when I manually edit them they get changed back. How come?
Answer: The property manager that Evolution and all of its auxiliary utilities use to read and write settings loads the global.dat and user.dat files into memory. The reason for this is because of efficiency concerns that the two files can become too big (they can grow to serveral MB). Therefore, the settings the property manager uses will only come from the copies in memory. If the user wants to edit either of files and to save the settings, the property manager needs to be restarted. Follow these steps to restart the property manager:

1. Open the Services window by going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services
2. Locate the two ionForge services (ionForge Document Server and ionForge Property Manager Server), right click on them and select Stop.
3. Make the edits you want in the .dat files.
4. Right click on the ionForge Document Server and select Start. The ionForge Property Manager Server will start immediately afterwards.

Question: How come I can't delete a ladder from the Promotion Editor? It either says the ladder is in use or it has a step attached to it.
Answer: To be able to delete a ladder from the Promotion Editor, not only must the ladder be removed from all productions in the Version Manager, but all steps must be detached from it also. To detach a step from a ladder, in the Version Manager, right click on a production and select Promote > Promote Step. Select a step to be removed in the next window and pick None from the drop down menu at the bottom. Click Apply to confirm the detachment of the step. After detaching all the steps from the ladder, Evolution will now allow the ladder to be removed from the productions. And once the ladders r removed, the user will then be able to delete the it from the Promotion Editor.

Question: How do I set up the promotion ladder permissions? How come I can't seem to save the permission changes I made for the steps?
Answer: Open the Security Manager, and at the top, select Options > Promotion Ladder Permissions. Pick a ladder and a step and then add the users who you want to be allowed to promote into that step. Click Apply before selecting another step or the changes will not be saved. Click OK when all steps have been set up.

Question: How come it says I have insufficient rights to perform a promotion?
Answer: Only Administrators (who have full rights) and users with the appropriate permissions can perform ladder promotions. Permissions, however, can be set up through the Security Manager to give certain users the rights to perform ladder promotions. Refer to the question above for instructions on how to set up promotion ladder permissions. Remember to click Apply before selecting another step to add users or the changes will not be saved for that step.

Question: How come when I try to create a new version for a production, it says it's been locked by another user?
Answer: A production in the Version Manager has two states, Locked and Unlocked. A production will start out as Unlocked, but it will changed to the Locked state when a user tries to version it by selecting Create New Version. Once in this state, only the user who has the lock on it can access it in the Version Manager. To unlock the production, the user needs to either Commit Version Changes or to Discard New Version.

Question: How can I setup a multi-project system so that each team only has access to the project that they are supposed to, and nothing else (including directories earlier in the path to the project ) ?
Answer: The recommended solution for this type of situation is to use shares. For each project, create a Production and share the necessary Productions for the project into it. Then, from the Security Manager, give the team full access to the newly created Production, and deny them access to everything else.

As an example, the following example is a situation where there are 3 projects ( labeled 1, 2, and 3 ), and 3 teams. Team 1 works on project 1, team 2 works on projects 1 and 2, and team works on projects 2 and 3.

To Administrators, the Production hierarchy looks like this:

To someone on Team 1, it looks like this:

And to someone on Team 3 it looks like this ( and similarly for Team 2 )

Note: To make this much easier, be sure to create a group for each team.

For additional help with this topic, please contact support@ionforge.com

Question: I'm having trouble migrating from the default Jet (MS Access) to MSDE. What commandline setup parameters should I use?
Answer: There are two different configurations that you could use. The first allows you to run the database and the Evolution server on differenct machines.

C:\...MSDE\>Setup.exe DISABLENETWORKPROTOCOLS=0 SAPWD="password" INSTANCENAME="myinstance" SECURITYMODE=SQL

The second is the same except that the database and server MUST be on the same machine.

C:\...MSDE\>Setup.exe SAPWD="password "INSTANCENAME="myinstance" SECURITYMODE=SQL

Miscellaneous

Evolution specific information that doesn't fit in the other Evolution categories.

Question: When I try to Edit or View a file from the Evolution right-click menu, I get the following error message: "This file does not have a program associated with it for permitting this action. Create an association in the folder options control panel." What should I do?
Answer: What this error means is that Windows does not have an association between the file's extension ( ex .jpg or .mp3 ) and a program, so it does not know how to open the file.

To fix this, you need to manually add the asssociation.

To do so:
1. Open an explorer window ( double click my computer or press windows-key + e )
2. Click the menu item "Tools" and select folder options
3. Click the "File Types" tab. ( It may take some time for Windows to list the existing associations )
4. First, try to find the extension in the existing list. If it is there, highlight it and click "Change". If it isn't, click "New".
5. Click the "Advanced" button.
6. Click the "New" button.
7. Type edit for the edit command edit or open for the view command ( depending on which one you are adding ) in the "Action" field.
8. Click "Browse" and browse to the program you want to open files with that extension.
9. Click "OK".

Repeat this process for the other command if necessary.

The view command in Evolution does exactly what double clicking a file in Windows will do.

By default, some programs do not have an edit command. In Evolution, the edit command automatically checks out a file and opens it by using the edit action associated with the file's type. If you don't want to add the association, for some files the same program is used to edit as is used to view, so you can manually check them out, and use the Evolutoin view command to open the appropriate program. Examples where this applies are Microsoft Office and various source code editors.

Note: Some programs require that DDE be set on the association as well. If simply using the above process does not work for you, the program may require the DDE settings. For more information about setting up DDE for your program, contact support at support@ionforge.com or see the forum topic here

People are talking...

"Evolution�s latest features allow us to optimize and refine not only our code, but our art assets as well. By letting us physically see the difference between levels of image compression, we�ve been able to reduce load times, and texture memory without sacrificing visible quality in our higher-resolution textures."

Drew Clark
Reactor Interactive

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