One of the most commonly asked questions of our support folks is “how can I share this Understand project” with somebody else.
In 1.4 this could be done in two ways – by having the same absolute paths (e.g. /sti/src ) or by using the relative project mode that located source files relative to the location of the project .udc file.
Understand 2.0 keeps those methods of portability but adds a new and more flexible method called called “Named Roots”. I view “Named Roots” as pretty much like environment variables. If I have a named root “STI” and it is set to “c:\sti\src” and I add a source folder c:\sti\src\maintain\ then when “Named Roots” are used my paths will show up as “STI:\maintain\”.
Read on to learn how to use them for fun and portability….
Here is my source added using absolute paths:
Selecting the Portability button: 
will take you to the Portability Options for the project:
Check the box to enable portability options and choose “Named Roots”:
Then click “Edit Named Roots” to add or select a Named Root to enable for the project:
I checked STI and set it to c:\sti\src. When enabled, c:\sti\src\ will be replaced with STI: everywhere used in the project:
including in graphs and other informational views:
So how does this affect portability?
Well, my co-worker Jim uses a different directory for his source tree – c:\dev\sti\src\ I can send this project to him, he can set STI to c:\dev\sti\src and he can use the project just fine.
Also, when I want to analyze/compare an older version of source against a new one. I just svn update to another directory, set STI: to it, make a snapshot, and compare. Easy!
IMPORTANT: One caveat about database sharing….. Any number of people can browse a network shared database, but if more than one is browsing then it cannot be parsed or modified.
Have fun sharing or moving Understand 2.0 databases!
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