1. Introduction

The following documentation conforms more to the actual specifications of the software than to its current prototype. While the prototype is very rude and limited, this documentation will enlighten you one a wider scope of soon-to-be available features.

2. Overview

The Pegase package is composed by three applications:

• PegaseDb is the heart of the process; this background application holds the database of source code and patiently waits for connections from clients.
• Pegase Server is the application that let you manage the server, see the current defined users and projects and who is using what.
• Pegase Client is the client-side application that the end-user uses to manage his sources.

One of the principles of Pegase is its capability to work under three kinds of situations:

• The novice user will want to start working with a standalone application. In this case, he only uses the client application, and the server runs in background on his machine.
• For larger projects, one might want to have Pegase running as a server on a LAN. Clients will connect to the server via TCP/IP or, more transparently, via the Identificator daemon.
• For distributed projects, the server can be running on a physically separate machine or network. The user will connect to the server machine by the Internet, using PPP. Once the connection is established, the connected user is considered as being on the LAN. But more than that, this method will allow the user to create batches of request offline, which will be compressed and submitted at once to the server while being online.

Identificator is exclusively designed for the BeOS. This daemon listens to a TCP/IP port for specific requests and periodically sends broadcast messages onto the network, in a desperate attempt to locate other Identificator daemons. Each Identificator deliver human-readable information about a machine (machine name, owner, etc.) This allows the end application to display a list of available machine on the network to connect to them via TCP/IP.

3. Quick Tour

3.0. Installing Pegase

The actual online documentation can be found in the documentation folder.
 

3.1. Start Pegase

There are three connection modes :

• as a standalone client/server application, running on the local machine; this option is well suited for lonely developpers.
• working on a LAN, where you would expect many client running for a single server; this option is well suited for team developements.
• working via PPP to connect to a remote LAN (or to a lonely machine via the Internet); this option is similar to the previous one but allows you to submit batched of queries prepared offline.

By doing so, you start the PegaseDb daemon in background (while the daemon starts, a small status window is displayed to give you some feedback). This is the real server, the PegaseServer application being only a front-end application to the background server.
 
 

3.2. Setup the Server

At first logging time, the server will create two users : the root one (the only and unique administrator) and a power user (named using the current machine's name, if any).
In the non-prototype window, you should at least set a password to the root administrator user.
The bottom part of the parameter window shows you the current state of the background server.
The top part contains a menu and a toolbar. In this earlier version, the toolbar is fix; but by the time of the BeDC, the full-featured XTBM (Xavier Ducrohet's Toolbar Manager) will have been fully integrated in the design and will provide user-customizable floating toolbars.
 

Basically, the parameter window let you manage users and projects.
Try clicking the New button under the user list and then the New button under the project list.
This will bring up to new windows that you use to create or edit users and projects.
 

 

User information covers a wide set of parameters. Some of this parameters are read only, even by the administrator. For example, this is the case for the creation dates. Users have an extensive and efficient set of rights. In the system, users are identified by a unique key; note that the logging name of the users must be unique while the real name is only an informative field.
The project information also covers a wide variety of settable parameters, though some parameters like the statistics are pure read-only field. Note that this: project info window lacks the Lock checkbox and the Lock owner field -- these will only be available in the future Extra Project Information window.
User and Project information actually acts as non-modal, inspector windows. They display the currently selected information and every change is immediately active. An alert box is displayed if some user or project information is modified while there are concurrent client accesses to the ressource but nevertheless the action can be done without disrupting nor disconnecting the client.
 
Next, go to the Server menu and select Disconnect. This will bring you back to the logging window.
This time make sure you activate the Client View radio button and select Connect.
You enter the real client side of the server.

3.3. Manage a Project

This is window lets you manage a project.
You can open several projects at the same time in the final release, but the preview release is limited to only one.
The top of the window contains the menu bar, the status line and the same kind of XTBM toolbar than in the Server Parameter window. The main middle part of the window is occupied by the project management lists while the bottom part gives yet another access to the most commonly used functionalities.

A project defined by Pegase is composed by several entities, forming an straightforward hierarchy :

• The project is the top level of the hierarchy; it typically corresponds to a single BeIDE project, for instance.
• A project contains several directories, which are virtual storage areas holding your files. Pegase directories have little to nothing to do with the way your BeIDE project is actaully locally stored. A directory is just a way to organise sources and easily naviguate through them. A file or revision typically binds to a single directory, but it is accepted to have it bind to no directory at all (in that case, it actually binds to the top directory) or to multiple directories at once. Each directory is associated a default working directory, which is the default user on-disk location for issuing check-ins and check-outs.
• Files are contained into at least one directory. A file is a recipient for one or more file revision. Each file can override its directory's working directory (this feature is strongly needed when a file is attached to several virtual directories since by default the first used directory becomes the default one for the file).
• A revision captures the state of a file at a given time and is the fundamental element of the management process.

• Edit the file or the revision directly into BeIDE, PE or StyleEdit.
• Lock, unlock, check-in or check-out a revision (the read-only attribute of the real file can be changed accordingly).
• Create revision labels (that can be used to extract an image of the project at a given date), merge several revisions or real files, compute differences between revisions or real files, and list revisions meeting a set of queries running on a variety of attributes.
• Add, remove, or delete a file from a project or a directory.

3.4. Future Directions

Add-ons for BeIDE

Full Scripting Support

Portability

Pegase is split into these two entities for connectivity reasons and portability reasons. PegaseDb runs under the BeOS using either local BMessenger or remote socket connections. PegaseDb can run under Windows using only socket connections.

Using socket connections, every version of Pegase Server will be available to connect to any other version independently of the platform.
 

4. Extra Information

The interface prototyping was done using Interface Elements under BeOS PR2. Thanks to A. Mezei for his comprehensive support. Thanks to Sander Stoks for his nicer and nicer Becasso paint application. And of course thanks to the PowerTeam members for everything else.

Pegase should be available in early beta versions by mid-1998.

Links :

• The Author : Raphael MOLL <raphael.moll@capway.com>
• PowerPulsar home page
• Pegase home page
• Be Inc. and the BeOS home page