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Author Topic: Nany 2009 Release: CrushPad  (Read 21621 times)

Crush

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Nany 2009 Release: CrushPad
« on: December 01, 2008, 03:28 PM »
NANY 2009 Entry Information

Application Name CrushPad
Version V1.0
Short Description Organize texts in Categories (Ticket-System - Multi-User possible with net drives)
Supported OSes Windows
Web Page -
Download Link * CrushPad V1.0.zip (475.73 kB - downloaded 1956 times.)
System Requirements
  • Pentium 25Mhz should be enough
Version History
  • 08/12/01 first release
Author [url=https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=51520]Crush


Description
I use it to make notices during coding

Features
You can create categories and subcategory tickets with states and search through all entries
Started over a network-drive several users can work in parallel and get all changes with signals
Its all you want it to be! I hope you can use it somehow.

Planned Features
nothing - that´s enough for the first shot

Usage
Installation
You need nothing special to do - only run the .exe file

Using the Application
I use it to take care of some ideas during development projects.
On work I used it for different kinds of support notices (and analyses in combination with Excel).

Uninstallation
Only delete all files in the directory

Known Issues
Nope, not bigger ones till now.

Screenshot
CrushPAD.jpgNany 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Last Edit: December 06, 2008, 04:46 AM by Crush »

f0dder

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Re: Nano 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2008, 12:16 AM »
How does it handle multi-users over network drive?

Asking because it's one of those things that usually, sometime, end up giving horrible data loss or at least just quirkiness. File locking isn't 100% reliable over network shares :/
- carpe noctem

Crush

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Re: Nano 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2008, 12:48 AM »
It´s using file locking and I tested it with 2 friends nonstop over several weeks without any problems. Before updating it reloads if changes have been made before the last save and a new search.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2008, 12:55 AM by Crush »

f0dder

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Re: Nano 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2008, 01:01 AM »
It´s using file locking and I tested it with 2 friends nonstop over several weeks without any problem. Before updating it reloads if changes have been made before the last save and before a new search.
Just keep in mind that, while it seems to work for now, there are several things that can go wrong when dealing with network shares. It only happens rarely when the file share is on a LAN, but it can still go wrong even there - I'm speaking from experience. The museum had a shared calendar that worked in much the same way, and it would lose data at least a couple of times a month. There were 8+ people using the calendar, so obviously that gave a higher risk of collision than just three people :)

Nothing wrong with your app btw., so I'm not criticizing you - iirc. the problem is something along the lines of client still thinking it's connected to the server (and holding the file lock), whereas the server (for whatever reason) has terminated the client connection and thus released the lock.

Oh, and never do anything depending on network share file locking across a WAN, the risk of disaster is much higher than on a LAN.
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Crush

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Re: Nano 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2008, 11:06 AM »
Tank you for your tips. I decided to do some small fixes/additions to the prog. Perhaps it´s better to lock not via the file system only, but with a special created locking-file during file-operations that will be deleted after work? A second pass to control datas could also be done for security reasons. The best would be to backup several times in line the full database to be totally sure not to lose all datas - they could be also used for a rollback-function.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2008, 11:08 AM by Crush »

f0dder

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Re: Nano 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #5 on: December 02, 2008, 06:27 PM »
Well, consider what happens if client crashes/disconnects/whatever and leaves the lock-file in place? That's not a good thing either.

Imho the best strategy, as long as dealing with fairly small files, is to always do a "write-temp", "rename-original-backup", "rename-temp-original" scheme - optionally using transactional NTFS is running on Vista or later. There's still some room for failure (very little when using transactional NTFS though), but in any case the old data isn't trashed, which is the most important goal.
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Crush

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Re: Nano 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #6 on: December 02, 2008, 06:33 PM »
The solution is easy: If the lock file isn´t deleted after 5-10 seconds the client obviously has been disconnected and others can update. The disconnected writer knows this also and can restart his update later. You only have to take a look at the creation-date.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2008, 06:45 PM by Crush »

Crush

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Re: Nano 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2008, 12:38 PM »
While clearing up the prog for release a function has been disabled through an oversight. Its now repaired. Please take the update thats online now. Thx to Perry Mowbray for his help.

terryowen

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Re: Nany 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2009, 04:27 PM »
I tried out your tool with interest - I've been looking for a small task tracker for a while now and yours is simple and lightweight, 2 very good things.  But maybe because I've been using standard tools for so long, I really miss some GUI standard kind of features.  I know CRUD is boring but it's intuitive.

--- when the program opens up, is it possible to have the list of tasks come up in the bottom?  The only way I can see to list everything is by searching for a period, so a button to list all tasks would be good, if you still decide to open up with a blank screen.

--- how hard would it be to add an option to always save the data in plain text?  That way you could edit mistakes or even import an existing list from another tool or merge with another person.  If it slows down opening if the text isn't compressed, maybe you could just have an index along with the data file? 

--- if I click on a record and then decide to insert a new record, it makes a copy of the one I'm on.  Is it supposed to do that?

--- having your categories read from the file makes it hard to set up some existing projects and categories, especially without an option to do it directly.  You actually have to enter tasks to enter category information.

I've been using Task Coach Portable lately and it also saves all the data, including categories, in the main data file but it has options to enter them separately.  I like Task Coach but don't actually need the overhead and all the features.  It's written in Python, so it takes up a lot of disk space.
 
I love tools that theoretically fit on a diskette, even though half the computers I have now no longer even have disk drives.  (It's my internal marker for bloat... ) 

I hope you continue to develop your CrushPad.  It's nice to have choices.

Terry (former QA staffer)

Crush

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Re: Nany 2009 Release: CrushPad
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2009, 07:58 PM »
Thank you for using and testing CrushPAD!  :Thmbsup:

I must admit that all of my tools have a very simplistic Dialog structure till now but I want to change this in the future.

Show up active Working could be done. There are different things that are nearly the same like unsolved, work in progress and partially solved. Should I show up all of them or specialized? This was was the reason only to show what you´re searching for. A show all buttion is no problem to do.

With the export-button you can save plain text. I only haven´t done an import-function till now :-[. The problem is how to create compatible states, because internally the categories and subcategories have a singular number and new categories/subcategories must be inserted the right way that they´re not leading to collisions. I wanted to do this later. An index isn´t useful. All entries should be inserted by their creation date.

--- if I click on a record and then decide to insert a new record, it makes a copy of the one I'm on.  Is it supposed to do that?
-> Yes. I made this because often some special cases appear again and again and so I only have to click on an old case, can change it if I like and so simply can insert and create a new ticket. It could be interesting to analyze the repeats of similar tasks/tickets.

--- having your categories read from the file makes it hard to set up some existing projects and categories, especially without an option to do it directly.  You actually have to enter tasks to enter category information.
-> Really? Creating categories and subcategories should work without any tasks. Please describe a more detailed example how to get this problem.

I've been using Task Coach Portable lately and it also saves all the data, including categories, in the main data file but it has options to enter them separately.  I like Task Coach but don't actually need the overhead and all the features.  It's written in Python, so it takes up a lot of disk space.
-> I wanted a lightweighted solution that saves as small files as possible and has only the features I personally need. This is the reason why I save categories/subcategories only one time at the header and use their index along with the tasks. I also planed to insert zip or 7z support for the datas if it doesn´t slows down too much.
Please tell me what features you use most that are missing in CrushPad. Experiences with other ticket-management-progs are very interesting. Till now CrushPad does its job good enough for me.

I hope you continue to develop your CrushPad.  It's nice to have choices.
-> At the moment other projects have a higher priority but I never wanted to stop its development. All of my programs could get new functions in the future at the latest when I personally need them. (Besides, I use my own programs quite often  ;))

After collection some wishes I´ll insert these functions in a new release.