TortoiseXXX: knowing which SCM software is used in a particular development project

Question

I have TortoiseSVN, TortoiseGit, and TortoiseHg installed on my system. As expected, but unfortunately, these tools use the same icons to indicate version control status for a specific folder. Thus, when I open the folder with software projects in Windows Explorer, I can not immediately see which SCM software is used with a particular solution / project:

I can, of course, check for the presence of .svn, .git, and .hg subfolders, but it would be more efficient if SCM is displayed on the main folder icon or as a hint when you hover over the folder.

Does anyone know if a shell extension exists that provides this functionality?

Answer 1

As noted by others, all Tortoise clients have a very good reason to use the same badges. Therefore, I will no longer go into details about this.

But why would you customize the top folder icons yourself? You can use the highlighted icon (not just the overlay, but the full icon!) For each working folder.

This way, you can immediately find out which version control system each working copy uses (provided that you use one icon to indicate working copies of git, one for working copies of svn and the other for hg working copies).

Answer 2

The reason for this is pretty simple (see TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit help files, searching for Overlays icons):

In fact, you may find that not all of these icons are used on your system. This is because the number of overlays allowed by Windows is very limited, and if you also use the old version of TortoiseCVS, then the available overlap slots are not enough. TortoiseSVN is trying to become a “good citizen” and restricts the use of overlays to give other applications a chance.

Now that there are more Tortoise clients around (TortoiseCVS, TortoiseHG, ...), the icon limit is becoming a real problem. To get around this, the TortoiseSVN project introduced a common, common icon set, loaded as a DLL that can be used by all Tortoise clients. Consult with your provider to make sure it is not yet integrated :-)

Thus, even if you change the blending style for one of the tools, perhaps all the others will follow it. If you work in XP (I tested it with Windows 7 and it no longer works there), you can specify the option in TortoiseSVN Help > 4.7.2 : TortoiseSVN Columns in Windows Explorer

There you can show additional columns in your Windows Explorer, perhaps this is the option for you.

Answer 3

The problem is that all Tortoise clients use the same common component to display overlay icons - TortoiseOverlays. Windows only has a limited number of free slots for icon mapping handlers (about 12 - the rest are used by the system itself). This is a problem for Tortoise clients, because they usually need most of those handlers to show different states of files and folders. If a user has more than one Tortoise client installed, this is enough to get into the system limit and some overlays will no longer appear.

The goal of the TortoiseOverlays project is to provide a common icon mapping handler for all Tortoise clients. This reduces the risk of falling into the system limit. The only drawback is that all Tortoise clients will have the same overlay icons, which means that users will not immediately see from the overlays that the version control system processes a specific file folder. But this is still much better than not showing the overlay at all due to the system limitation.