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IBM Domino Designer XPages User Guide
This guide focuses on the aspects of creating applications using XPages technology.
Administering applications
IBM® Domino® Designer provides features for administering and managing your work and related files while developing your application projects.
Source control in Domino® Designer
Source control operations are possible with Domino® Designer. The section provides all the information needed for using the source control enablement feature which makes this functionality available.
Setting up the Source Control enablement feature
The following topics provide information on initial set up tasks that need to be completed in order to begin using the Domino® Designer source control enablement feature as part of your day-to-day source control operations.
Selecting the way to represent design elements on disk
This topic describes the ways to represent the design elements on disk.

IBM Domino Designer XPages User Guide
This guide focuses on the aspects of creating applications using XPages technology.
- Product overview
  IBM® Domino® Designer supports applications development for the IBM Domino platform using XPages, forms, views, and other elements such as controls.
- Tutorials
  This section contains tutorials and information about tutorials.
- Administering applications
  IBM® Domino® Designer provides features for administering and managing your work and related files while developing your application projects.
  - Source control in Domino® Designer
    Source control operations are possible with Domino® Designer. The section provides all the information needed for using the source control enablement feature which makes this functionality available.
    - Source control enablement
      Source control enablement feature has been introduced to let you store NSF based design elements into a source control repository and perform common source control operations using Domino® Designer.
    - Prerequisite: Setting up the version source control system used with source control enablement
      This topic describes how to first setup a version source control system so that you can use the source control enablement feature.
    - Setting up the Source Control enablement feature
      The following topics provide information on initial set up tasks that need to be completed in order to begin using the Domino® Designer source control enablement feature as part of your day-to-day source control operations.
      - Before you begin: Creating associations between on-disk projects and NSFs
        The source control enablement feature requires you to create an association between an on-disk project managed by the source control and the virtual NSF based project that Designer uses.
      - Associating the NSF with an existing on-disk project
        The source control enablement feature lets you create an association between an existing on-disk project managed by the source control and the virtual NSF based project that Designer uses.
      - Setting the direction of the initial synchronization operation
        This topic explains the directions available for the initial synchronization operation that occurs when creating the association between an NSF and an on-disk project.
      - Associating the NSF with a new on-disk project
        The source control enablement feature lets you create an association between a new on-disk project and an NSF.
      - Setting source control enablement feature preferences
        This topic explains the preferences you can set to customize your source control enablement feature operations.
      - Selecting the way to represent design elements on disk
        This topic describes the ways to represent the design elements on disk.
    - Completing common source control tasks with the Source Control Enablement feature
      The basic steps of a general workflow are provided to give you an idea of how it works with the Domino® Designer source control enablement feature.
  - Command Line Building of NSFs/NTFs - Headless Designer
    A command line build system has been added to Domino® Designer to let you build NSF and NTF files from source code repositories.
- Designing XPages applications
  IBM® Domino® Designer provides the means to populate an XPage with controls and other artifacts, and to associate an XPage with data stores.
- Designing composite applications
  You can create composite applications from XPages.
- Programming
  XPages uses JavaScript™ for programming while the forms-based design elements use the formula language, LotusScript®, Java™, and JavaScript.

Selecting the way to represent design elements on disk

This topic describes the ways to represent the design elements on disk.

There are two different ways to represent the design elements on disk depending on the type of the design element being represented.

As a set of 2 files (content and metadata) on disk -- XPages, Custom controls, Style sheets, Files, Themes, Composite Applications, Wiring properties, and JS/SSJS/LS script libraries are represented as a set of 2 files on disk, the content file and the metadata file. The Content file has the actual file content as seen in the editor and the metadata file contains the DXL minus the content to represent rest of the attributes of the design element.
As a file containing the DXL of the design element -- The rest of the design elements, Form, View, Pages, Java™ script libraries, Agents, Shared Actions, etc. are represented as a file containing the DXL of the design element. A preference is provided to use "binary" format for DXL for the exported content. See the Setting source control enablement feature preferences topic for more information.