An introductory guide to 4D and Version Control Systems
For many years, 4D has allowed you to develop binary databases as part of a team with a 4D Server. This way of developing is straightforward, but many developers asked us to be more efficient on source code management to deliver better traceability. 4D has heard them and developed Project mode to fit this need. This mode opened a new era of collaboration thanks to version control systems!
How to take advantage of GitHub actions with 4D
Your project is now on a source control system. This means that managing several versions of your software, monitoring changes, and integrating corrections or new features is much simpler now.
Why not also take advantage of continuous integration?
Starting with 4D v19, you can launch the compilation of your project with a command. As a result, you now have all the building blocks needed to automate your integration chain.
This blog post will give you an example of automation with the GitHub manager and GitHub Actions.
Extensive library of 4D applications available
With projects and the ability to share project application source code via a source control system, we’ve published more than 35 repositories to GitHub (at the time of writing this blog post). This includes HDIs, components, and full example applications. Speaking of full example applications, two more have recently been added:
Project Databases: Build your own documentation for components
In a previous blog post, we showed you that documentation for methods has returned in the Explorer. Want to take things even further and use them as documentation for your components? In this blog post, we’ll show you how!
News flash: 4D components available on GitHub!
In 2017, 4D initiated a new program to share the source code of 4D internal components to 4D Partners.
Sharing the source code of 4D components lets you customize them and make them your own! With project databases and the ability to share an application’s source code via a source control system, we’ve converted our 4D internal components into project databases and pushed the source code to the 4D GitHub account. It’s open to everyone, all you need to take advantage of it is an account on Github. Why did we do this? To make your life easier by keeping track of changes and modifications to both code and forms.
Project databases: Git. Commit. Pull. Push & more
In a previous blog post, we introduced you to Git (a version control system) and Github (a cloud-based hosting service) and how you can share your 4D code with other developers. In this blog post, we’ll go a bit further by exploring some scenarios a developer may encounter, such as cloning a remote repository, ignoring already committed files, and solving merge conflicts.
How to share your 4D code via Github
So you’ve been testing out project databases … maybe you’ve created one or perhaps you’ve converted an existing binary application. Now, it’s time for us to show you how to use Git (the revision control system) with Github as the hosting service for your 4D application.
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