We store .FBP7 files in subversion and since they are XML format they do merge. However in the past several days I have developers make changes at the same time to the same script. Merging of changes made to .FBP7 has been a bit more difficult than expected.
I really think it applies to any file that is XML in nature.
It would be nice to have it actually look like a script as an actual language.
This would allow for better merging but it would also allow developers the ability to edit scripts by hand (easier).
Changing the project file format to a script like language would be a huge amount of work. One of the reasons for choosing XML (back in 1999) was that I wouldn’t have to write a parser. The actions in FinalBuilder know nothing about the file format or the streaming code, I could see a lot of that changing if we were to use a script like language.
One thing I would like to do is create a diff merge tool for FinalBuilder projects, though most likely it would be plugin for something like Beyond compare (which we use here). Unfortunately it’s not a high priority task and we have limited resources/time etc.
I’ve been hit by this too. I guess what we really need is a decent XML-Diff Tool/plugin that enables us to compare XML changes “intelligently”. Haven’t found such a tool yet unfortunately
