Advice on repository design for multiple projects using shared source

wrmarvin bill_marvin at hotmail.com
Fri Jan 28 09:34:40 CST 2011


I have been brought into a company that has multiple software packages and
multiple projects per package written in Visual Basic 6 (and cobol) (on
Windows) by a single programmer over the past 15 years.  He was an
accountant and a self-taught programmer.  The programming is a poorly
structured mess!  There was no source code management system used.  All the
code and vbp projects were kept in a single directory.  The cobol is in a
separate directory.  There are 86 VB6 projects.  Most are exe-projects, but
some are dll-projects.  In many of the projects, a shared source code module
(say Main1.bas) is used in each project.  Generally this Main1.bas has a
"Sub Main" that is set as the startup procedure for the project.  Main1.bas
also has many other common functions and subroutines.  Some of the projects
also share some of the forms (progress.frm).  Some projects are cobbled
together from shared source and forms from multiple other projects.  He did
no version control and over 15 years all projects are still version 1.0.0.

I am new to Mercurial/TortoiseHG and have spent about 2 weeks studying
documentation and searching through the mailing list to try and figure out
the best way to setup repositories/sub-repos or remote-repos to try and get
this monster under control.  I think I am to the point of almost total
confusion on how to handle this mess.

I would think that shared source code needs to be tracked separately from
the main project code, but changes to the shared code may not effect some of
the projects because that project does not use the routine that was changed
in the shared code.  The original programmer just kind of "knew" what would
effect what.  This original programmer sold the company and software to the
current owner and I have very limited contact with him.

Any help/suggestions on how to initialize a repository system to begin
source control of this evolved mess would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

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