Creating and Managing Projects
Assist adds a new kind of programming idea to Liberty BASIC, which is called a project. This is similar to projects in other kinds of programming software. The project holds more information than just the source code for a program.
When creating a project we can just start writing code as if we were only making a new BASIC source file, but a project lets us do a lot more.
To create a new project, we use the File menu (File+New...+BASIC Project as shown).
Creating a new project
Then Assist will ask for a project name like so:
Entering a project name
Here is what we see when the project is created.
New project cooltool.bas
Look at the title bar and notice that it says Project and also unversioned. Let's type some code and save it:
Saved cooltool.bas project
See that it still says unversioned. This is because saving isn't the same thing as versioning. When working on project code in the editor, this is the working copy. We might save our working copy many times before we decide it's ready to become a version. When we saved the project Assist wrote the code to the disk file cooltool.bas in the project folder.
Let's make a version now. We will use the File menu as shown (File+Project+Commit version) or press Alt+C.
Committing a version
The following commit window will pop up. This lets us choose a version number and write a helpful comment about the version. Let's keep the automatically suggested version number of 1. This comment should reflect anything we think we might want to remember in the future. For example "Just start by adding code for a window".
Typing in a version comment
Here's what we see when we clicked OK to proceed with the commit.
Our first versioned project
Usually a new version will be made after writing code that adds a new feature or fixes a bug, or if significant coding progress has been made. Let's add some more code to our program so we can make another version.
Trapping the close event
Now let's save the code using File+Save. See how the titlebar says "Project cooltool.bas v1 has changes". This means that it is based on version 1 but it has been modified. This lets us know that we have uncommitted changes. Now let's commit this as a new version.
Making our second version
Okay now you'll see that the titlebar indicates version 2.
Now at version 2
Now that we know how to create a project and create versions, let's show how to open a project. Let's close Liberty BASIC and reopen it so that we can do this from a clean slate. Now click File+Open (or type Ctrl+O). We find the cooltool_project folder as shown below and double click on it.
The cooltool_project folder
Notice the cooltool.bas file below? This is just an ordinary basic code file, but Assist knows that it's opening a project because of the name of the folder in which it exists. Now we double-click on the cooltool.bas as shown and the project will be opened.
Open the cooltool.bas file
Now were back in familiar territory with the project working copy in the editor.
The freshly opened cooltool.bas project
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