Many moons ago I started storing my music as MP3’s. I downloaded like mad and just dumped them all into a folder. After collecting thousands of songs I had a big mess. After two years of organizing all music in my free time I have made it to “D” section of my library. I am starting to write code on a daily basis and I would like to keep a lot of what I do for reuse and future reference. I use Visual Studio a lot, and Eclipse sometimes, but I also do web development. Right now I am just have a folder on an external drive called Projects and inside that folder I have code I want to save broken down by its respective IDE and then the language it was developed in. This is working ok right now, but I fear after a few years it might get hard to navigate, and I don’t want another mess like my music library. What are some good ways to keep track of code and programming projects while also promoting easy navigation and future reuse?
I use a subversion repository for purpose of saving code for the future. In my repository I have the following folder structure:
\
|- Project1\
|- - Trunk\
|- - Branches\
|- - Tags\
|- Project2\
....
This is working for me and I have big and small projects that I coded on since high school in this repository. If I for instance want to port a project that I coded on Linux to Windows I create a branch that I for example call Win32-port. And when I have a 1.0 release of a project I create a tag named 1.0.
Using this method you can also set up back-up scripts and save a backup to another location. (I use a cron job and some python scripts to achieve this, but it all depends on what system the server uses.)
A book about subversion are freely available here: Link
For Mac OS X, there's the beautiful Snippets:
(source: snippetsapp.com)
Also, the new Xcode 4 will have native support for custom code snippets.
It won't really solve your organising problem, but you'll be more productive anyway by using snippet be it inside Eclipse or inside Visual Studio.
Here's a short tutorial for snippet in Eclipse : http://www.dansshorts.com/post/creating-snippets-in-eclipse
And here the explanation to create them and link them to a keyword in Visual Studio 2010 : http://www.visualstudiotutor.com/2010/02/create-snippet-visual-studio-2010/
This would take a bit more infrastructure to set up and is more for multiple people working together, but the best approach is to start thinking of Software as a Service.
For commonly used functions, wrap them as a web service with good documentation. For instance, if you have a phone validator that seems to be constantly used across projects, it would become part of your validator service.
With few exceptions, most shops don't seem to organize/share code effectively with static document type code libraries.
This would also force you to refactor the code snippets into reusable methods instead of just random code that is copied/pasted in. It also gives you a clean seperation between the public interface and private implementation.
Related
i am new to Unity and i am try to understand plugins. I have got the difference between a managed plugin and a native plugin, but what is not very clear to me is:
what is the difference between a plugin and a dll? what should i expect to find in an sdk to make it usable in my unity project?
Thanks a lot
To expand on #Everts comment instead of just copying it into an answer, I'll go a little into details here
What is a plugin?
It's a somewhat vague word for a third-party library that is somehow integrated with the rest of your game. It means that it neither is officialy supported by Unity, nor is it a part of your core code. It can be "plugged" in or out without altering its internals, so it must provide some kind of API that can be used by the game code.
For example, you'll find many plugins that handle external services like ads, notifications, analytics etc. You'll also find a couple of developer-tools that can also be called plugins, like tile-based map editors and such.
Plugins come in many forms - DLL files are one example but some plugins actually provide full source code for easier use. And of course, other plugins will provide native code for different platforms, like Objective-C for iOS or .jars for Android.
So to answer your first question:
DLL is simply a pre-compiled source file that can be a part of a plugin
A plugin is a whole library that can consist of multiple files with different formats (.cs, .dll, .jar, .m etc)
What do you need to use an sdk?
First of all - documentation. Like I said before, and like you noticed yourself, not all plugins give you access to the source code. And unfortunately, not many sdks have extensive and developer-friendly documentations so it can be a tough task to actually understand how to use a given sdk.
Secondly - the code. Many sdks give you some kind of "drag & drop" library, a single folder with all the neccessary files inside that you simply add to your Unity projects. I've also seen sdks that use Unity packages that you have to import via Assets > Import Package > Custom Package.
Once you have the code and documentation it's time to integrate it with your game. I strongly recommend using an abstract lyer in your game as, in my experience, you often have to change sdks for various reasons and you don't want to rewrite your game logic every time. So I suggest encapsulating sdk-related code in a single class so that you have to change only one class in your code when switching from, say, one ad provider to another (and keep the old class in case you need to switch back).
So you basically need three things:
Documentation (either a readme file or an online documentation)
The code (precompiled or source)
A versatile integration
VS2013, MVC5, VB
I am nearing the completion of a small project to manage the roles tables in a standard MVC5 application. The code is pretty much encapsulated. What are my options for using this 'package' in other projects?
Can I compile it into something? I know this type of action is possible, I'm just not familiar with the options available to me or the steps to do this. Links to sites that have tutorials are fine. Is creating a Nu Get package the only way to go, or is that even in the ballpark of what I'm asking. I say Nu Get, but I don't mean for public consumption, only for my consumption.
Will the finished 'whatever' include it's controller class, view models and views? Will I be able to easily manage updates? etc.
Creating a Nuget package is one way. I have created a local repository of common utilities for this purpose. But I usually use it just for DLLs. I use Nuget Package Explorer for its ease of use since its just me using the packages most of the time. Not sure its possible to place the files in specific directories.
Files in the content folder are copied to the root of your application when the package is installed. - Nuget
The alternative is to create an item template. I used to use this method for class files I want in my code but I can't see why you couldn't do it for the rest. Works well and isn't too hard to set up. There are dozens if not 100s of tutorials on the subject. Here is one on code project.
I've created a web app (mvc4) that I'd like to reuse in multiple projects. The site is an admin panel, but it may be extended and slightly modified in each project. I want to avoid copying the project over, because I'd like to be able to update each project to the latest version at the lowest possible cost.
So far I have tried 2 approaches:
a script that 'clones' the project by copying all the necessary things as well as altering others (guids in assemblies, namespaces and things like that) - this works fine for extensibility and modification, but that's just a copy so pushing 'updates' is a mess (I did it manually) and it does not scale.
portable areas from mvc contrib project - this seemed like a good idea at first, but it turns out that it's nice for simple scenarios, but fails at more advanced use cases. It doesn't support localization (from resources embedded in the portable area), bundling and min requires a lot of hacks (mvc contrib is still on mvc 3), it's not possible (out of the box) to reuse shared views or Display/Editor templates from the portable area and it looks like if I'd go further that way, some new things would come up
Currently I'm thinking about 'just' branching each project from the core one. This would of course require the same changes (or at least a big subset of them) that were done in the script I mentioned earlier, and I'm afraid that if I try to pull updates from the core project the number of conflicts will render the whole approach unusable.
Does anyone have an idea on how I could tackle this problem?
I'd suggest to create a NuGet package of the mvc app and reuse it. So versioning and applying updates would be much easier. However it takes a bit work to make your code completely isolated from the codes you want to add in the new project.
We are currently looking at the newest version (2.60) of NopCommerce in MVC and we will be integrating it pretty soon…We’ve downloaded the Source Code and paid the 20$ for the User Guide documentation. The documentation is great! I mean…it is great in the sense that it explains how to deploy, install and how to work around the UI Frontend and Backend. This is great for an overall overview but what it lacks is the understanding of how to work with NopCommerce as a team. What are/is the best practices etc...
As an example (or parallel), if you decide to work with Dotnetnuke as a team, you usually work in the following fashion:
Each developer downloads/installs Dotnetnuke locally on their
machine.
You also download/install Dotnetnuke on a dedicated server (let’s say
dev-server).
As a developer, you work and create modules which you test locally
within your Dotnetnuke installation.
Once it is done, you package your module (and any SQL scripts that
comes with your module) into a zip file.
Once the package is ready, you upload/install that package on the
dedicated server (dev-server).
This approach works great for Dotnetnuke and more importantly if you have a team of developers creating modules.
My question is how does a team work with NopCommerce MVC?
I’m assuming it is a bad idea to directly work within the source code in case your team decides to modify core elements/source which will make any upgrade to newer versions impossible (or break changes).
I’m not sure if my parallel to Dotnetnuke is a correct one…but would anyone have any idea (or help me clarify) how does a team work with NopCommerce MVC.
In addition, should the team only rely on creating plugins for NopCommerce and stay away from modifying the core or should this be irrelevant?
What about adding new objects in SQL (or modifying existing ones) should we prefix our objects in case an eventual NopCommerce MVC upgrade creates similar objects and/or overwrites them?
Thank you for helping me shed some light on this.
Sincerely
Vince
Plugins in NopCommerce are almost like modules in DNN. Depending on what you need to do, it sometimes is necessary to modify the core code.
What I've been doing for the Services is create a new class and inherit from the existing service, then override the function you want to change. Create a new DependencyRegistrar class and set your new service classes as the implementation for that particular interface. Also make sure the Order property is 1 so that your DR class is loaded after the stock one. Since you're inheriting from the core class, any functions you didn't override will be handled by the parent class. If I need to add a new function, I'm just modifying the interface, putting a stub in the stock class, and implementing it in my own.
Views in the Nop.Web project can be overridden by Themes. The Admin stuff and the Web Controllers get trickier. I'm just modifying those files directly.
The Core and Data classes can be done using partial classes to add your new fields.
In any case you will still need to merge changes with your solution when an update is released. My opinion is that you are better off writing clean, readable code now and bite the merge bullet when it comes.
I don't really worry about SQL scripts right now because I'm a single developer but maybe you add a folder for ALTER scripts and name them after the day they were created. Then each dev knows which scripts they need to run when they get latest.
Maybe this applied to other Delphi's (I've only used 7). We've got our code broken up so that nearly every DLL in our fairly massive app is in a different folder.
99% of the open source stuff I've downloaded to plug into Delphi have had all their source munged into one folder.
It seems like this was an assumption that the developers of Delphi made about the coding practices of it's users that may be non-obvious.
I don't think so. In fact, In more recent versions they've added features to the project manager to make it easier to deal with the fact that code is spread around different directories (such as the flatten directories option), so I think it is accepted that this is how many people organize their code.
I suspect it's more to do with projects growing organically over time, and whether anyone takes the time to tidy up.
I for one definitely do not put all the sources into one directory but rather keep them in groups that have something in common. e.g. I use subversion externals quite extensively
(see http://www.dummzeuch.de/delphi/subversion/english.html , the section about externals).
I prefer different modules to be hosted on different folders, then have a common folder for units that is shared among different modules, makes management easy. e.g
myClientServerApp:(parent)
Client folder :(child)
server filder (child)
lib - (child)
Back in DELPHI 7 I also had all files in one folder. It has easy for small projects, but very hard for med to big one.
So I began to create a folder structure for all DELPHI projects small or big.
Over the year I am trying to improve, this folder structure, and every new project I make a small improvement so that it is simpler, logical, and more organized.
This day I am trying to make some parts of it sharable to several project. Its work in progress.
It would seem that having all the units in one folder would save you headaches in doubly named units. On the other hand, it might be handier to keep your projects in different folders when checking in and out of your version control. On the other hand it really doesn't promote code reuse to have them separated out like that.