How do I
Get multiple developers working on the same wordpress blog or the same code for another type of website
Be able to preview those changes
Have control over which and who's changes are implemented
Have the ability to undo the changes if they break something?
What you are really asking is "how do i manage a development team?"
You need a source control system (of which there are many, some free, some good).
But just having that is not going to fix your problem - you also need a development process to follow. There are also many development processes (ideologies) out there, some better than others, but none of them should be used in totality (you will end up using bits and pieces from several, you use what fits your needs).
The process dictates what the developers should do. The source control system helps you with how it is done. Using the source control, you can branch and merge code, and dictate what changes make it into a release version of your product.
Once you have the source control system in place, and a process of reviewing and vetting changes made to the code, and an automated build process (if applicable), your end result will be much cleaner - if implemented properly there should be no need to "undo changes if they break something", because that dodgy code would never make it back into the source control system (but you can roll it back within source control if it does).
Edit: note that i have not advocated any particular source control system or development methodology, it is best left to you to decide which suits your needs. For every advocate of a particular system, there will be someone who doesn't like it for some reason, so it will be difficult to get a definitive "this system is the best" type of answer.
Besides utilizing source control, you need to elevate one of them to team leader and hand him this set of goals! ;-)
Related
I'm having difficulty convincing others in my organization to stop indiscriminately locking files on checkout. Any ideas where I can find an "official" document explaining why a checkout lock should be used sparingly? Microsoft recommends:
As a best practice, use the Lock type option with discretion and
notify your teammates why you are locking an item, and when you plan
to remove the lock.
but does not go into any details.
Anything that I could point to would be very helpful.
Although I don't have an official Microsoft source, I'm an MVP in Application Lifecycle Management, so hopefully that's enough to make this compelling. :)
Locking text files (i.e. code) on check-out can be a massive impediment to productivity. I've seen it myself when I was working at a time a co-worker wasn't, and they had an exclusive lock on a file. All of a sudden, it's thumb-twiddling time. It's even worse when you're trying to troubleshoot or fix a time-critical issue.
The most common reason why people want to lock a file for exclusive editing is because they don't want to have to perform a messy merge later on.
That is usually symptomatic of one or more things:
The files being exclusively locked are too big (one file with lots of classes in it, a "god class" that does too many things, etc). The resolution for this problem is to refactor code into smaller, more isolated classes according to the Single Responsibility Principle. Or, if you absolutely must, and you're working in the .NET world, abuse the partial keyword to split the same class up across multiple files, although I want to go on the record and state that every time I see this in a codebase it makes me cry a single tear of infinite sorrow.
The files being exclusively locked are in the midst of major, long-term refactoring. The solution here is to isolate major changes within branches, with frequent reverse-integrations of changes from the trunk back to the branch.
The person doing the change just doesn't like merges. I can't help you with that one. If you're holding onto code without committing it for a long enough time that a merge is going to be painful, you're not committing your code often enough. If you're not committing your code because it's not done yet, but the change is ongoing and you don't want to interfere with others' work, then you're not using branches properly.
Can there be times when exclusive locks against code files are good and useful? Probably, but I can't think of a problem that it addresses that can't be addressed by using other, more appropriate source control features.
Use Local workspaces if you can, since they don't enforce exclusive locks.
For me exclusive locks have become usefull when I check-in changes in *.sln or *.csproj files. Otherwise problems arrise when concurrent check-ins are performed, since VS appears to cache these files in memory without saving to disk.
I’m writing an application with Ruby on Rails. This application will be delivered to a minimum of two different customer types. The base is always the same but some of the views differ. That’s mostly it. For now.
Is there any way, for example using branches, to use the same code base and separate only the views, for example? I read the Git manual for branching but am still not sure if this is the best way to achieve what I need.
Another idea would be forking. But, is that clever? If I change something in the code of fork A, is it easy to merge these changes into fork B?
Branching and forking in git is not bad at all, as the merge support is great (possible the best of al VCMs).
Personally, I don't like the idea of branching or forking a project to provide different customization as it can very quickly become really difficult, e.g. what are you going to do if you have 15 different deployments?
I think a better approach is to build the application so it behaves differently depending on some parameters. I'm well aware that sometimes the implementations are very different, so this might not be useful anymore.
Another approach is to build the core of your app in a GEM which acts as a service to the application, and the only thing you customize per client are the views. Of course, the GEM should be generic enough to provide all the services you need.
Please share with us what you decided, as there's no best answer for your question.
It would probably be better to make you product select between the types at either build or runtime, that way you can use a single set of source.
Otherwise it is possible with branches, and merging, but you'll have more difficulty managing things. Forking is basically branching at this level.
I agree with #Augusto. You could run your app in 2 different environments, ie production_A and production_B. From there, you could use SettingsLogic to define configurations based on Rails.env, then reference those settings in your app when selecting which view to use for example.
I wonder what sort of things you look for when you start working on an existing, but new to you, system? Let's say that the system is quite big (whatever it means to you).
Some of the things that were identified are:
Where is a particular subroutine or procedure invoked?
What are the arguments, results and predicates of a particular function?
How does the flow of control reach a particular location?
Where is a particular variable set, used or queried?
Where is a particular variable declared?
Where is a particular data object accessed, i.e. created, read, updated or deleted?
What are the inputs and outputs of a particular module?
But if you look for something more specific or any of the above questions is particularly important to you please share it with us :)
I'm particularly interested in something that could be extracted in dynamic analysis/execution.
I like to use a "use case" approach:
First, I ask myself "what's this software's purpose?": I try to identify how users are going to interact with the application;
Once I have some "use case", I try to understand what are the objects that are more involved and how they interact with other objects.
Once I did this, I draw a UML-type diagram that describe what I've just learned for further reference. What happens after depends on the task I've been assigned, i.e. modify the code, document the code etc.
There is the question of what motivation do I have for learning the new system:
Bug fix/minor enhancement - In this case, I may focus solely on that portion of the system that performs a specific function that needs to be altered. This is a way to break down a huge system but also is a way to identify if the issue is something I can fix or if it is something that I have to hand to the off-the-shelf company whose software we are using,e.g. a CRM, CMS, or ERP system can be a customized off-the-shelf system so there are many pieces to it.
Project work - This would be the other case and is where I'd probably try to build myself a view from 30,000 feet or so to know what are the high-level components and which areas of the system does the project impact. An example of this is where I'd join a company and work off of an existing code base but I don't have the luxury of having the small focus like in the previous case. Part of that view is to look for any patterns in the code in terms of naming conventions, project structure, etc. as this may be useful once I start changing some code in the system. I'd probably do some tracing through the system and try to see where are the uglier parts of the code. By uglier I mean those parts that are kludge-like and may have some spaghetti code as this was rushed when first written and is now being reworked heavily.
To my mind another way to view this is the question of whether I'm going to be spending days or weeks wrapping my head around a system like in the second case or should this be a case where it hopefully takes only a few hours, optimistically that is, to get my footing to make the necessary changes.
I want to know best practices for creation of features.
Normally Visual studio extension creates feature for each web part.
Or it good practice or we should create 1 feature for multiple web parts in one WSP?
I don't know of any best-practice, but I can see two ways (I can think of) of looking at it:
When you separate your webparts into several features, you have the possibility to activate/deactivate the different webparts at will. If one webpart has an error you can just deactivate it. When one webpart fails compiling, you still have the others running smoothly.
The downside is that you "clutter" the Sharepoint Interface, because you have to manage several Features instead of one. That goes for activating/deactivating as well as deploying/retracting.
If you have one feature it is all of the above, just in reverse. You only have one feature to activate/deactivate, which makes it faster to manager. But if that one feature fails in some way (or any of the webparts within) you can only deactivate the whole thing. The same goes for deployment/retracting. When one webpart within your feature fails you have to retract the whole thing.
Whether development is easier or harder depends on your preference. One might say that it is harder to keep a consistent configuration in one huge feature deploying a multitude of webparts, workflows and master pages (where was the entry for that workflow again? ah yes, in line 1112) - on the other hand you have everything in one place and don't have to search in several features.
I would really make it up to your personal preference. When you are deploying a Solution to a customer, the customer is certainly more happy to click/install/deploy the "MyCompany Super Solution Feature" instead of several smaller ones, in the end you don't install MS Word with several setup.exe's (and then again, you can choose what features of Word to install...)
It basically depends upon your requirements.
By the way, this problem is resolved in VS 2010 extension
I know there is a lot of talk about BPM these days and I am conscious that some may see it to be a craze rather than a fundamentally important piece of software.
As someone from what most would call 'The Business', I have been doing my best to learn about BPM to ensure we continue to make decisions that not only make sense to the business, but IT as well.
I have noticed while reading that mention is made to application workflow when sometimes discussing BPM. I hadn't given this much thought until recently.
Therefore, what is the difference? When would you use one and not the other?
BPM is about the process and improving it, which takes into account users and potentially more than one application,e.g. an ERP system may have more than one application to it, though there may be other uses of the term. Note that the process could be viewed without what applications or technologies are used.
Application workflow is how an application is used to go from a to b. Here it is a specific set of code that is used and what happens over the course of an application getting from a to b. In this case, the application is front and center rather than the process.
Does that provide an answer? Another way to think of it is that multiple application workflows can make up a system which is used in a process that can have BPM applied to it.
Late to the game, but workflow is to database as BPMS is to DBMS. (Convenient how the letters line up, huh?)
IOW, BPM(S) is traditionally meant to refer to a particular framework/application that allows you to manage business processes: defining them, storing them, versioning them, measuring them, etc. This is similar to how a DBMS manages databases.
Now, a workflow is a definition, much like a database is a definition. In the former case, it is a definition of operations/work (Fufill Order), steps thereof (Send Invoice) and rules/constraints on the work (If no stock, send notice). In the latter, similar case, it is a definition of data structure (CREATE TABLE) and constraints (InvoiceTotal must be > $0.00).
I think this is a potentially confusing subject, particular as some development environments use a type of process flow model to generate user facing applications (I'm thinking about Outsystems here, for example).
But, for me, the distinction is crystal clear. Application workflow, as people talk about it, refers to a user's path through an application, i.e. the pages they complete/visit, the data they enter, etc. on their way to completing a transaction of some sort. Application orkflow is a poor term for this though, I think application flow would be more meaningful.
BPM on other hand, is about modelling and executing a workflow process. By workflow, in this context, I mean a series of discrete steps (or tasks) that have to be completed (either programmatically or via human interaction) in a certain order to complete a process. These tasks can be implemented as individual application modules (each with their own "application workflow", see above). The job of the workflow engine is to make sure that these separate steps are assigned to the right people (of groups of people) in the right sequence, and that overall the process completes in an orderly way.
I don't think there's a clear answer to this at all. These are words, as opposed to theoretical concepts. If you add the word "checklist" into the mix - that just turns out to be a linear version of a process (but you can have conditionals in checklists - making them a workflow).
I am not sure how to help in reframing this question, but it's almost as if no answer can ever be possible. My own thoughts are at https://tallyfy.com/improving-efficiency-workflow-vs-business-process-management/