Re: [Gnome-devtools] What we're doing.

[Andrew Sutton <asutton21 home com>]

Dave Camp wrote:

> There are as many different development processes as there are
> organizations.  The important thing in a development environment is to
> support the process the *user* wants, not the process the implementor
> of the environment happens to like.  For example, on your other list
> you advocate integrating some sort of rational-style process into the
> tools.  That's fine and dandy, if your organization uses and enjoys
> the rational process.  On the other hand, there are plenty of darn
> good software packages that were built differently.
> 
> The point is, it is much more important to have an open framework that
> can have process tools integrated than to base the whole framework on
> one arbitrary set of tools.  We don't want to ignore these tools, but
> we don't want to force them on the world.
> 

of course, that's always a problem. nobody wants to force anything on
this particular world :) dear god, that would be disaster...

i like processes, though. it's a nice way to lay out thoughts, organize
ideas, and make sure you get everything done that you want to. i also
realize that a single rigid process isn't going to work for every
developer or every product. in the creation of a development process for
this type of thing, care would have to be taken that the process was
either absolutely transparent (to people hacking out a small program) or
essential to the effort (to organizations creating a huge chunk of
software).

the development environment can be used to employ the tools required for
the project. the developer(s) can call out any or all steps in the
process to create software. from my understanding that's called
configuration management. this feature then makes an ide suitable for
established corporate work too.

> Since we don't have a legion of coders (there seem to be a lot more
> talkers than coders in this area), we have to choose a subset to
> implement first.  That subset is logically the implementation tools,
> since these tools are common to all development processes.  If you'd
> like to work on the other parts of the chain, we'd be happy to accept
> your contributions.
> 

i'm having to relearn the art of linux development - and catching up to
the newer technologies (after a year long windows only stint). it'll be
a while before i can contribute real code. that's why i'm trying to
throw ideas around :)

Andrew Sutton
asutton21 home com