[UPDATED] Review: SAPIEN VersionRecall
I recently played around with SAPIEN’s VersionRecall, and thought I’d share a bit about the experience. As a note, SAPIEN provided me with a license key to use. VersionRecall is advertised as a simple, single-user version control system “for the rest of us.” There are no servers, no databases, and nothing complex, according to the marketing copy.
Setup is quick - a 3-screen wizard and you’re done. Installation took under a minute. When you first launch the product, it attempts to find all the places on your computer where you might store scripts, so that it can connect those to a version-control repository. You can skip that bit, but it only took a few moments on my virtual machine. It found my DSC scripts, my PowerShell modules, and several other places I’d dropped scripts. You then indicate where you’d like your version-control repository - this is where old versions of files will be saved. You can also pick a certificate, to have the software automatically sign scripts each time you make a new version. That’s a subtle and very cool feature - and it’s a way to make AllSigned a more convenient execution policy.
I selected an option to have my version control repository updated every day at 4:30pm. That seems to let the software capture a snapshot of any changed files at that time every day; it was clear that you could also manually submit an update to the repository using VersionRecall or Windows’ own File Explorer.
From there, you’re in an Explorer-like view. It includes a tab for each folder where you store scripts. I find that I like that approach a lot - I tend to organize my scripts that way. I’ve got my modules in one spot, some sample scripts in another, stuff I’m playing with in a third, and so on - so the tabbed approach fits my organizational style. You can open files for editing right there. I don’t have PrimalScript installed on this test machine, but files opened in the ISE just fine. Ribbon buttons let you open the shell, the ISE, or SAPIEN’s PrimalScript or PowerShell Studio products.