Server-side

Server side addins are DLL's installed on the Team Coherence Server. Depending on the functionality exported from the addin, functions in the DLL's will be triggered after certain Version Control actions and also allow you some control of the server in order to carry out maintenance actions.

An important thing to remember about server side addins is that they are running from within a Windows Service and so should not prompt users for information while it is running. In addition the addin should do what it needs to do as quickly as possible so as not to adversely affect the performance of the server.

To allow as many development tools as possible to be used to create addins, addins are implemented by exporting certain functions from standard Windows DLL's. For an Addin to be valid, it must export the following two functions:

   VcsInitAddin
   VcsReleaseAddin

The rest of the exported functions are optional and are usually called after certain Version Control actions, including:

   VcsAfterCheckIn
   VcsAfterCheckOut
   VcsAfterGet
   VcsAfterLock
   VcsAfterUnlock
   VcsAfterPromote
   VcsAfterRemoveVersion
   VcsAfterCreateProject
   VcsAfterCreateFolder
   VcsAfterDeleteObject
   VcsAfterLogin
   VcsAfterLogout

When multiple actions occur at the same time, i.e. checking out a folder, these actions are normally bracketed by the following calls:

   VcsBeginAction
   VcsEndAction

Another, optional function can also be exported. This allows configuration of the addin from the Repository Properties dialog box:

   VcsConfigureAddin

During the initialization of the Addin, the server will pass in pointers to functions that can be used to control certain aspects of the server and to allow you access to functions to retrieve additional information. These include:

   DisableServer
   EnableServer
   FlushBuffers
   Reinitialize
   ValidateRepository
   EnumerateFiles
   GetUserInfo
   GetFileInfo

The server dll also exports certain functions which allow basic modification of repository data. These exported functions are wrapped in the file uUtils.pas which can be found in the Common subdirectory of the example trigger source.

Installing Server-side Addins

To install a server-side addin, you must first of all stop the repository running. To do this, start up the Server Configuration dialog and select the repository:

With the repository selected, press Stop to shut down the running repository. To add an addin to the selected repository, Click on Properties to display the repository properties dialog:

Clicking on the Add button allows you to select the DLL file that implements your addin. If the addin supports it, you can also click on the Configure button to configure any settings required by the addin.