embel.py has two major advantages when compared to merging with SVN branches:
- no manual setup required (i.e. you don't need to recreate source- and target-projects as branches)
- "idempotence", i.e. you can re-run embel.py for a given source- and target-project as often as you like, the result is always the same (http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence). In other words: if the target file (or project) is embellished already, another run won't mess it up.
As explained in the embel overview, doing the work of retrofitting PhoneBook tutorial features to a uigen.exe-generated new and improved PhoneBook is BORING, but that is an oversimplification. Truth is, this task is BORING, TEDIOUS AND ERROR-PRONE. Keep in mind that with all those
SearchResultXForms, SearchResultXControls, EditXForms, EditXControls, ascx.cs, aspx.cs, ascx, aspx, the retrofitting embellisher soon feels like the lost protagonist in the Colossal Cave text adventure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave#Maze_of_twisty_little_passages). Even with practice, mistakes, errors, bugs and head-scratching are the human condition after modifying templates (and this includes theming).
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