How to "fork" a PT project or make a temporary working copy [solved]

Question

Project History panic

A second side note - if you want to create some side project for someone else, it is better to create a copy of the entire project and work with that project.

In another thread, @anon848905 has given me the idea to make a working copy of a project. Today I have another need and it is not obvious to me how to do that.

Consider this scenario:

A PT project run by a team of five users. The tech guy (who comes to places like this site here) wants to get one book ready for publishing as an Android app. He wants to use some of the inbuilt tools like “Mark Occurences of Selected Terms as Glossary Items…” but does not want the entire project to suffer all side-effects.

So for a few days he wants to create “a fork” with full functionality, while the rest of the team continues their normal translation and editing work on the “main branch”. Once the inbuilt tools have done their work and a good version has been created in the fork, that fork can be deleted and the remaning publishing prep-work is happening by external scripts and other tools.

I am something like that guy, and when I search the help and this forum for “project copy” I find stuff that mainly looks like creating backup, not something that would give me a full working copy.

When I click “create new project” I can select a number of options like “daugther project” or “auxiliary project” and those I find briefly explained in the help article “What different types of projects can I have in Paratext?” From what I read, I might try the auxiliary option. The help does not explain how a “new project as aux option” will work: Does it automatically pull a full copy (books, key terms, word list, spell checker) of the “donor project” or will it create an empty project?

So, how do I best create a full working copy of a certain “standart translation” project, where the tech guy can show (send/receive) his work to the language-guys and where there are no registration issues and where the beast can be killed after a few days without haunting an office for years to come?

You get my drift. I would need such a fork a few times per year for some experiments or for testing or for publishing preparations of portions.

Please share if you found an effective way of having such copies. Thank you all.

Update: Just tried creating an auxiliary project and it did not copy anything, although based on a full standard translation project. Then tried importing books, and the import worked, but all biblical key terms, were not copied over. Wordlist also did not receive any data like hyphenation.

So there must be a better way to create “a real copy” of a project.

Update2: Just tried creating a copy via backup and restore (as I sometimes do in Fieldworks). anon848905 had also mentioned this option in his post:

Project History panic

You can, however, use Backup/Restore to create a new copy of the project.

When I tried to do the restore from a fresh backup I get very severe warnings about “not destroying this project which is shared between several users blablabla” and it does NOT offer me an option like “restore to another name”, just a “procede anyway”. What happens when I click “procede anyway”? Will it offer to restore to a new name in the next step?

I hope not ending up with doubtful explorer hacks like renaming entire project folders to “hide” them from PT8 for a few days…

Answer 1

This is how it worked for me, after half an afternoon of tests and experiments:
[note: this post has been edited; so the thread below makes less sense (sorry) but this note to myself is now more useful because the settings can also be forked to the new project I learnt]

Use > File > Backup Project To File... to create a local backup. Read the entire backup-options-window carefully. Include all the books you need for your fork. Make sure you tick the box "include project properties and settings".

Then do > File > Restore Project From File...

In the file-dialog select the backup you just created and click "open" in your language.

Now if you are part of a shared project, you will get a very dangerous looking message, saying

“This project belongs to a shared project. blablabla … two lines of blabla. Continue anyway?”

You can happily click on "Yes" in your language, because you will have more options in the next window…

Now finally you get a window entitled "Restore" where the first line shows the backup you have selected two steps above.

The second line is interesting, since it gives you the "Restore into" selector and also a "New Project..." button. This is what you should use to create a full working copy aka as a fork.

I have only tested this twice, both times with the choice of "Type of Project" being "Auxiliary".
You will see a lot of properties and settings, and the entire window is called "Project Properties and Settings". It has got five tabs. My guess is that if you restore your project into a new project with not-suitable settings, it will be a zombie project and will show the famous unexpected bahaviour.

In the main “Restore” window, after having clicked the “New Project…” button and having opted for an auxiliary project and set a new name etc. the “Files in Backup” column is offering at its very top one line marked “Properties and Settings - [time and date of backup]”.

Check the box next to that line, and it seems this will “restore the project settings into the new project”.

Having set the "From:" and the "Restore into:" suitably, you will now see a long list of "Files in Backup" on a left colum. Careful, some of those might be unticked, depending what you selected for "Restore into". My guess is that you will only get a full working fork, if you select all the boxes on the left. There is a convenient "Select All Files" button below the list, where I found it after I had scrolled all the way down and had manually ticked all missing boxes. (Not a complaint, just sharing).

Now you can make yourself a little drumroll and click "OK" in your language. It takes a few seconds and you get a lot of good stuff inside the project you have selected for "Restore into".

All this is probably not new to many power users. But I could not find any documentation and had gotten scared about the warning message I have mentioned above. So it took me some time to create a throw-away dummy project to test all this process. So hope this can help some other users. Please correct or add detail if you know more about creating working copies of projects. Thank you.

Comments

Another option for “forking” a project (if you are a project administrator) is to use the Convert Project tool. In PT8 this is found under Tools > Advanced > Convert Project. In PT9 this is found under the Tab menu hamburger) > Project > Advanced.

When you convert a project you keep all of the settings (including users) and the history. Therefore this process can take a long time for a “mature” project with lots of history.

Once the project is converted you can change the type of project to the type you need and you can change the users as appropriate.

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The issue about memorizing all the settings and manually restoring them has been solved in the replies below. Please read the entire thread (dear myself) before you attempt to follow these notes. You can save a lot of work.

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Has anyone tried making an auxiliary project and copying all the data into to make a sandbox project? You don’t need to do a back up and restore with an auxiliary; you just click on the import button and select all the books you want.

Answer 2

Thanks for the question @Tim and thanks for the answer too.
You describe the standard way that we make copies of projects for training exercises, etc. However, the bit about copying and restoring settings manually is foreign to me. I thought the settings would have been the same if the settings were copied and restored (one of the check boxes).

Needless to say, this highlights a problem.
If we want people to copy projects this way, we need to make it easier and less scary. If we don’t want to copy projects this way, we need to provide an alternate way for you to work in a sandbox to produce your app for a book without messing up the rest of the project.

We will have a new publishing committee that will be forming soon to look at use cases like these and I will file this away for our first meeting.

Comments

dhigby:

However, the bit about copying and restoring settings manually is foreign to me. I thought the settings would have been the same if the settings were copied and restored (one of the check boxes).

If you restore the project settings into the new project, it should replace the settings that were set manually. @Tim, this should save you a step and keep you from having to remember all of the settings. If you try it and it does not work, please let us know (since it should work).

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Thank you @anon291708, I am trying this now, because we are getting ready to use SAB again.

Note to self: In the main “Restore” window, after having clicked the “New Project…” button and having opted for an auxiliary project and set a new name etc. the “Files in Backup” column is offering at its very top one line marked “Properties and Settings - [time and date of backup]”.

I have now just clicked the box next to that line, and I believe, I have now done what was suggested, namely “you restore the project settings into the new project”.

Yes, it worked! The settings were automatically copied to my new fork. I will edit my long post above accordingly. Bother: I can no longer edit the long “instructions” I wrote for myself. Will sneak a hint into the very question at the top.