Re: [Gnome-devtools] Project Configuration Management

[Dave Camp <campd oit edu>]

Ed Snible <esnible acm org> writes:

> (LotR asked me to describe the project configuration management features
> in Microsoft Visual C++/Studio.)
Thanks very much for doing this, Ed.

> The developer starts Visual C++ with a "Workspace".  A Workspace is a
> collection of "Projects".  A Project is typically an executable, but
> libraries, dynamic libraries, and arbitrary Makefiles can also be
> Projects.  (Most developers work with workspaces containing one
> executable project and one project for each DLL.)  A Project is a
> collection of source files, organized into a tree of folders (more on
> this later).

Workspaces are a nice feature.  Whether or not we need to put this
in GBF is debatable (it could be easily implemented outside of the
framework).  However it is still a pretty darn useful feature (I can't
think of a time where I've used VC++ and not made use of that aspect).

> A Configuration is a collection of make, compile, link and debug
> settings for a Project.  A Configuration can specify individual settings
> for every file (and folder) in the project, but naive developers don't
> need to know because Microsoft cleverly hides this complexity unless it
> is needed.

I think this is a very important feature.  Done correctly, the ability 
to switch between debug and release modes in VC++ is very nice, and
IMHO should be included in GBF.

What does everyone else think?

Later,
-dave