Technical Preview

This article provides details about functionalities that coolOrange is working on.
Before we finalize this feature for all our products, we want you to try it out for powerEvents and give us feedback.

Because this release is a technical preview, details and functionality are subject to change.

Customization distribution

Several coolOrange products allow scripting guys to provide customizations for automating company wide workflows.
After these could be evaluated on test environments in customer-oriented situations, it makes sense to distribute the new files to all workstations.

A simple and fast distribution via a central share is made possible by Git repositories, to which all worstations only require read-access.

coolOrange Customization Share - Git Server

To enable the distribution of your customizations via the Vault Server environment our preconfigured Bonobo Git Server can be installed on your Autodesk Data Management Server.

This self-hosted Git Server is a lightweight open-source project which is fully compatible with the Autodesk Data Management Server requirements.
Therefore no further components need to be installed and no additional ports must be opened in the Windows Server Firewall in order to be able to use this very simplistic Git Server.

The following installer automates the necessary steps for installing the latest version of Bonobo Git Server in IIS and creates the necessary git repository for powerEvents workstations.

Autodesk Data Management Server
Download: coolOrange Customization Share - Git Server

Installation:
The setup is delivered as an executable and accepts the standard windows installer arguments documented here.
To accept the products EULA when starting the setup in silent mode pass the ACCEPT_EULA=1 argument.

Updates:
To install a newer version of our Bonobo Git Server just execute the setup file of the new version.
This will not reset your customizations in the existing repositories.

Uninstall:
In case you want to remove the ‘Customization Share - Git Server’ from your Vault Server you can:

  • Execute the setup file again. This will give you the option to repair or remove the Bonobo Git Server. Click on “Remove” to uninstall the program.

  • Go to “Control Panel - Programs and Features”, find “coolOrange Customization Share - Git Server” and run “Uninstall”.

All the currently published customizations are also removed and are then only available on synchronized workstations!
Therefore, please make sure whether you want to back up your data in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\coolOrange\customizations\App_Data beforehand.

Once the installation is complete, all the published files within the repository are automatically distributed to all connected Vault worstations as soon as they are restarted.

Launch your browser and go to http://{Your_Vault_Server}/coolOrange/customizations.
Now you can see the initial page of Bonobo Git Server and you can login with the default credentials username: admin password: admin.

After all the files in the C:\Program Data\coolOrange\powerEvents directory were tested on your test environment, they can be published to the according repository.
The script Publish-Customizations helps here and it automatically sets up the steps described in the following chapter.
Even git experts, which want to use development environments like Visual Studio Code, are advised to run this script for their first publication!

Manual configuration: Commit and push files to powerEvents git repository using Git or Visual Studio Code

First download and install a Git client on your test environment.
The repository powerEvents.git can not simply be cloned to your non-empty C:\Program Data\coolOrange\powerEvents directory.

However it is possible to initialize the current directory as local repository and add the repository powerEvents.git as remote:

cd 'C:\ProgramData\coolOrange\powerEvents'
git init
git remote add origin http://{Your_Vault_Server}/coolOrange/customizations/powerEvents.git

These steps can also be performed in development environments like Visual Studio Code:\

../_images/vs_code_open_powerevents_folder.png ../_images/vs_code_initialize_powerevents_folder.png ../_images/vs_code_add_remote_powerevents_repo.png ../_images/vs_code_add_remote_powerevents_repo_2.png

All the files within the local master branch can now be committed with a meaningful commit message.
Afterwards this commit can directly be pushed to the original powerEvents.git repository:

git add --all
git commit -am "committing tested powerEvents customization changes to production"
git push origin master

In Visual Studio Code a commit looks like this, followed by a click on the Publish button:\

../_images/vs_code_commit_powerevents_files.png

Your customizations can now be used productively on all workgroup environments which are part of this Vault site.