Re: [Gnome-dev-roadmap] Existing Resources

[Ahmad Baitalmal <ahmad bitbuilder com>]

Dave Camp wrote:

Hello, my name is Dave Camp, I'm one of the hackers working on the
GNOME devtools project.

A little background on what we're doing (for anyone that missed
Martijn van Beer's excellent summary on gnome-devel-list).  Our goal
is to create a powerful development environment for GNOME, based on a
solid foundation of bonobo components.  Some of our current projects
include an incremental syntactic analysis framework, an embryonic
project manager, and a set of debugging components (my baby).  We plan
to build a powerful, extensible environment with these tools.

Development might seem slow on our part.  This is partially because we
are overwhelmed with the amount of work (there are really only a few
of us, and most of us have jobs and school to deal with), and
partially because we are working on the "foundation" components. Very
little of it has come together in a usable application yet (one
exception I can think of is dryad, the standalone debugger written
with our debugging components, http://internet.oit.edu/~campd/gdf/).
Our philosophy is to build small, powerful tools that do their job
well, not to get an end user app out immediately.

The devtools project has existing infrastructure and resources.  I
believe it would be more productive for us to work together, rather
than having two seperate projects with very similar goals.  To this
end, I implore you to consider working with us in our established
channels, including the gnome-devtools helixcode com mailing list (to
which you can subscribe at
http://lists.helixcode.com/mailman/listinfo/gnome-devtools) and the
irc channel where we hang out (#devel-apps on irc.gimp.org).  A
duplication of effort would be wasteful, and would ultimately hinder
the goal of a complete development platform for the gnome project.

Please consider this,
-dave



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Dave,
    I'm so glad you pointed me to those resources. GDF look like just what the doctor ordered. 

I understand how it might seem like we are setting up duplicate efforts.
 But in reality, we are not. This list was started because (as the title
 implies) the development environment needs a roadmap. Skimming over the
 list archives there is no mention of that. Things like, what do we do about
 solution deployment? distributed information systems? knowledge management?
 etc...

By now it may be evident :) but I left Microsoft last November. I've been
 developing  their data warehousing tools and before that on MCS and a bunch
 of other stuff. When I look at the development environment difference, it
 is HUGE. Lots of linux developers do thing because they are fun. These people
 do things because in 5 years it will be fun. 

DevStudio is not an IDE. It is a tool by which MS plans to dominate (as usual).
 Why would I go out and hinder my self with "external" (to dev studio) tools
 if it has a debugger is that freakingly good and very much integrated for
 example? I could barely swallow BoundsChecker. They achieved that (hense
 Borland/Inprise's market share) by following the developers trail to the
 end. 

InterDev, for example, is not just an HTML editor. You can run a whole company
 on that package alone. Everyday I find out about some service that it provides
 then I go "Man, they thought of that already!". They must have had a roadmap
 that stipulates why and how. 

Talking to the former CTO at my current work place, I was trying to introduce
 Linux/Gnome as an alternative. His questions hit the spot. "Can I deploy
 easily?", "Will the developers have to be retrained?", "Whats the cost benefit?",
 "Will everyone know how to use it already?".. I had no good answers. And
 looking at the  linux development efforts currently, they address key mapping,
 perl bindings, emacs lisp, etc... 

I said this earlier, and here it applies to gnome-devtools as they build tools. We must start building solutions.

-- 
Ahmadster
www.BitBuilder.com