How to view who has a file open on Windows fileserver

Question

I was contemplating moving to a version control system at work, but the learning curve may be too much for the many copywriters that open simple html files and editt them on our shared development server. The main issue is that sometimes two people will work on the same file (on our development server) at once and overwrite each other.

Is there any extension to Windows explorer that will simply display a lock icon near a shared file that is already in use? For us, something like this maybe be simpler than teaching everyone to develop from their own working copies and use version control clients. I just want a visible warning to users that a file is already in use and should not be worked on. Thanks

Answer 1

There might not even be enough information on the fileserver itself to determine this. For example, if you open an HTML file in Notepad, the file is loaded from disk and then the file is closed. Notepad keeps a copy in memory without keeping the file open on disk. This means that the fileserver doesn't even know that somebody is busy editing the file.

Some text editors might keep the file open but this is probably the exception rather than the rule.

A version control system (Subversion with TortoiseSVN is easy for people to use) allows users to declare their intent without relying on the underlying technology opening files in just the right way. TortoiseSVN displays a "lock" icon beside files that are locked (you lock a file with a "Get Lock" menu option). Files without the lock are marked read-only to help the user know that they aren't ready to edit them yet.