Add option in Designer to configure a location for the backup in the V9 Solution Folder

[#1]

In the course of normal process development each time you save the solution in V9, the designer will either update or add a new backup in the solution folder, assuming you have a) backups turned on and b) have configured either 1 or X backups to be retained.

When working with a source control system (specifically Subversion), the backups folder is also under version control though.  However this causes issues with Subversion in the form of an unhandled exception and also subversion setting the Read Only attribute on the Backup folder.  This occurs everytime the solution file is saved in designer.  The reason for this is because the backup contains a collection of files whose names are the same as that in the solution folder itself.

Switching off the backup when working with Source Control is one option for resolving this, however if you checkout at the beginning of the day and attempt to commit at the end of the day but due to a compilation/validation/deployment issue have to revert back to the previously saved version, it's possible that all your work that the days work may be lost.  It may be possible to retrieve a version from the repository, however this gets complicated if multiple developers are working on different areas of the same V9 solution.

One way to get around this is to have a configuration option in Designer where if you want to save backups of a solution that is under source control that you can also configure where those backups are stored.  Somewhere like <My Documents>\BPM Development\Backups or \\<network share>\<UserName>\Backups would be preferable for those of us working with source code control system.

[#2]

We use VSS, and we just do not put the Backup folder under source control. If we did, you would have to check out the similarly named files in VSS to edit (which would be a pain). I am sure any decent source control system should allow you to exclude specific files or directories, and that solves the problem you have.

Having said that, I feel a separate directory for backups, with a user configurable path, would be a good idea all round, as it allows for more efficient storage, especially when zipping a file for delivery to a client.

[#3]

I agree with you Jerome, and it is something we've looked at with Subversion, however Subversion only allows you to ignore specific file types, there's no option to ignore folders.