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I'm a fresh graduate and having trouble which is the best way to create a web project if branching or single web project with many conditions.
FOR EXAMPLE: I have multiple clients with different insight about our system. Some clients want to use certain features while others wont.
SOLUTION 1: Create each branch for each client to separate their project buildup
PROB. ENCOUNTERED: If I have multiple clients who wants the same features it would be very tedious to repeat the programs.
SOLUTION 2: Only have a single project that have many setup conditions to activate feature depending on the clients need
PROB. ENCOUNTERED: This will be slower because each feature that can be unique for each client should have a program condition. It is also much harder to debug in this solution.
Probably the easiest way is to use a plugin style system. If you define it correctly it will make for updating the system easy if there was a bug in one of the features that a client desires. Now you can still ship the program with all the features, but in a config file you could turn features on and off. Now this will require you having a good logging system in place. Both of these systems require a fair amount of research.
Any sort of branching as you suggest is a bad idea. I would recommend that you use Git instead of TFVC in TFS and use Git flow (http://nkdalm.net/Git-Flow) for your branching strategy.
As long as your branches are short lived (hours not days) they can be useful. If you end up with a branch for each customer you will end up with too much technical cruft and ultimately drowning in complexity. This is not a pleasant place to be.
You should invest in, and implement, a good feature toggle system that you can use to enable and disable features for customers. Where you hit an identical algorithm or behaviour that needs to be different per customer you should implement a switch possibly with dependency injection or plugins.
If you use good engineering practices, practice some form of test first, and maintain working code at all times, you should never need more than a single long term branch.
Does anyone know if there is a way to make Vault, or the users of Vault to automatically check in their checked out files at a certain time of day (i.e. after office hours).
I know there are obvious drawbacks to implementing this so if anyone has any ideas to bring about the desired result (checked in files), please share.
Thanks
I can't really possibly think of any benefit automatic commits could bring.
If I have some unfinished work on my local computer, I can either have two choices, or a single one depending on this factor:
Am I using distrubuted versioning or centralized versioning?
In the first scenario I can committ locally without pushing to the central repository, thus gaining the benefits of version control without forcing other people to deal with my unfinished or possibly broken code.
If it's centralized versioning, you suck it up and keep it locally for the next day, hoping your HDD doesn't fail overnight.
It's really simple as that. Then to just answer your question, no, I don't recall such functionality in vault (or any other versioning software) and I think that would be a terrible idea.
I have an application that has to support modifying some registry data depending on the kind of 'installation' that is desired. At present, I have no problems hard-coding to either get elevation and do the changes to the entire local machine, but it is far from nice as ideally, I would also like to support per-user installations. I could hardcode that, but then I lose the local-machine stuff. To be precise, the changes in question involve file association changes, COM stuff etc.
How can I properly support both usage scenarios? Currently I use a set of ON/OFF checkboxes for the variety of associations.
Should I change this meaning on, for example, a MachineInstall file existing in my apps directory, and if not assume User install?
Is it an expected/valid/whatever usecase to say that someone might want to do some things for the entire machine, and some things only for the user? (E.g. mixing of the two.)
Or should I change the entire UI, move away from checkboxes and move to some sort of combobox going 'None/User/Local'? Then again, I think this might have some sort of breakage once you involve multiple users and combinations.
To give an indication, I personally expect the application in question to have its uses for everyone on a computer and as such lean towards the Local-Machine as a 'default', if that makes any sort of difference.
I am likely overthinking the matters quite a bit, so any and all input is very much appreciated. :)
P.S.
Now, someone is probably going to say 'do not do all that stuff from your app, do it from the installer instead'. And they probably have a point, but the point is to allow easy changing of these settings from within the application. To top it off, I am not using .MSI install packages because they make working with 32/64-bit specific executables a disaster requiring merge modules, spawning other MSI's depending on the situation, and so forth (I forgot the details last time I dug into it and forgot about the matter). I don't have that knowledge, nor the time to learn all the intricacies of MSI installations, so it is out for as far I am concerned. To boot, my application is perfectly capable of functioning without any of those registry entries being present, and that is by design. In a way, one might compare it to be like Process Explorer from Sysinternals, which does not require an installer, but can be unzipped and take over the task manager etc without a problem if a user wants, or simply run stand-alone.
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Hey all. I would like to get some insight on a question that I have been trying to find some information about. If you are the solo developer that is building a project from ground up, how do you manage the project? In the past, I have worked on a few personal projects that have grown into fairly large projects. In almost all of those projects, I have tried to wear the hats of all the roles that would normally be in place during a normal software development project (i.e. Product Owner, developer, architect, tester, etc.). It seems that when I leave the project for some time and come back, it is extremely hard to get back into the rhythm of what I was doing. So with that, I have some questions:
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways? If so, how do I go about
doing this, and how do I manage these
requirements? Product backlog,
features list, etc?
If this is the case, are full blown product backlogs or use cases a little overkill?
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow? Start coding
immediately, write down user
stories/use cases, then go into
OOA/D?
What diagramming/modeling would be sufficient for this level? Domain model, class diagram, etc?
Basically, I was curious how everyone out there in the SO community would go about developing a project from inception to deployment when you are the lone, solo developer. What steps, documentation, and other project related activities are needed to help bring this project from an impractical, hobby project to something more professional? Any help, references, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
The most difficult part, I have found, about developing solo is that it's just tough to keep yourself driving forward. Even if you're doing this to make a living (AKA, running your own software business), unless you have pressing needs (AKA, you're going to starve if you don't make money) it can be difficult to sit down and just code.
From your perspective, I would recommend following good software practices where it makes sense to. For example, if I were a solo software developer, I would have no reason to create a collaborative development environment. All I really need is an SVN server, my IDE, and a place to record documentation (might setup a wiki or a website or something). I would personally create a realistic schedule to follow and would work on sticking to that.
As for level of effort of documentation, that really depends on you and the product you are developing. For example, I would definitely recommend recording your requirements. Unless your product is trivial, there is no way you'll remember them all and why you wanted certain ones over others. Managing a full backlog, however, can be a job in and of itself. In the solo programmer case this may not make sense.
Basically, the point I'm trying to get across (and should be followed with every project - not just in this case) is have just enough management that makes sense. The rest should be focused on the work and the development of the product.
Something else you may want to look into is reading this - Agile Programming Works for the Solo Developer. There are other, similar, articles out there. Might give you some good thoughts.
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways? If so, how do I go about
doing this, and how do I manage these
requirements? Product backlog,
features list, etc?
I have two lists of features:
A high-level view which states the scope of the finished product
A list of the features which I'm implementing in this iteration
Because I don't need to communicate it to other people (yet) I tend to write down the things that I don't know about the project (if I already know it there's no need to write it down): it's when it gets too complicated, or when there are details which I haven't defined but need to define, that I start to define them in writing.
I did however try to investigate/make a business-case for the project before starting coding.
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
I did non-programmer, product-owner thinking at times when I had to be away from the computer anyway.
Apart from that, my cycle is:
Implement more functionality
Integration-test it
[repeat as above]
Every 3 to 6 months I compare the new-functionality-accomplished against my estimated schedule, and then recalibrate: i.e., make a new list of the highest-priority features to implement in the next few months.
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow? Start coding
immediately, write down user
stories/use cases, then go into OOA/D?
I started with working part-time or in my spare time, to make sure that I had:
Understood the required functionality
Made significant architectural decisions
Written any throw-away prototypes as necessary to learn new technology
After that I was ready to start developing full-time.
What diagramming/modeling would be sufficient for this level? Domain model, class diagram, etc?
I'm not using diagrams at all (except for sketches of the UI). By structuring the code, and refactoring, I'm able to know/remember/rediscover/decide which software components implement what functionality.
It seems that when I leave the project
for some time and come back, it is
extremely hard to get back into the
rhythm of what I was doing.
You need to comment your code more. If you leave the code, come back in two weeks, and can't remember how the code works, you need more comments.
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways?
Yes, for the same reasons stated above.
how do I manage these requirements?
A feature list is OK, provided you have enough detail in each feature to jog your memory.
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
Break down each feature into smaller and smaller tasks, until you feel like you can do each task in a half day or less.
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow?
That depends on your development style. In general I would follow a clear but simple architecture, avail yourself of software patterns where practical, and provide adequate unit tests for your code as you go.
What diagramming/modeling would be
sufficient for this level?
Sufficient diagramming/modeling to make the project clear in your head.
What steps, documentation, and other
project related activities are needed
to help bring this project from an
impractical, hobby project to
something more professional?
Other than what I have already mentioned, make sure you have a good source control system and daily backups in place.
Good luck!
If you believe there is a chance that you're going to work on the project for some amount of time, leave it, and then come back to it at a later date...your best bet is to treat the documentation for the project the same as if you were working with a large team.
That means documenting requirements (even if they're from yourself), writing use cases (if functionality is going to be complex, otherwise some other form of documentation could suffice), and some level of UML diagraming (or other domain specific diagram) which could include activity diagrams/class diagrams/etc.
That way, when you leave the project for some amount of time, you can come back to a well documented idea and pick up where you left off.
As a side note, I try to do the majority of those things no matter what...that way if I ever find somebody interested in working on the project with me, I can get them up to speed quickly and get them on board with my ideas.
This is how I work, YMMV:
Keep a spreadsheet for high level of everything - list of your projects, and some top-level items/todos/reminders
Create a "project" folder for each product/project you have or work on, and create a strucuture to contain documentation and code for the project.
Keep a top-level "catch-all" document for each project, in the root of this folder. Keep you ideas, research, notes etc in this doc.
Then if you want to get organized, keep an MS project file (or similar) and plot out timelines for the various steps in each project. This is good for tracking progress on each project and make sure you arent forgetting anything. Basically keeps you honest with yourself.
And if you need to track progress on project work you are doing for clients, I understand Basecamp is a good solution for this. I am currently evaluating it for my own company. See www.basecamphq.com
Even as a solo developer, you should document at least the overall features of your project, and then the requirements for the particular feature you are working to complete, and then maybe produce a short pseudo-code for the functionality you're currently working on.
That way, if you do end up breaking away from that project, you can get back to it and see where you're up to easily enough. It's also pointless getting too far ahead of yourself with details for this same reason.
It's also a neat motivational tool for a solo developer - getting through and ticking things off is a way to show progress - something that you can start to feel you're not making when you're chewing through a couple of thousand lines of code and it seems like you're still miles away from actually having 'module x' completed.
Lastly - with regards to code comments - I at least try and fill out what actions/behaviour a new function should have in an outline, and then write the code in between the comments. Also, it is useful having plain English explanations of why you're branching in an if/else to support the logic in the condition...
I belive that better results in solo development one can achive with appropriate tools support and tasks that compensate lack of ohers people and help to organize working time. Any tool that generate metada with minimal create time cost describing your software is helpful.
VCS and tools for tracking user actity/code changes history - very important is to add good commit messages
mind-mapping tools for storing project related data (e.g. XMind), blacboard is useful too :)
time tracking tools (e.g. Toggl.com)
write a lot of acceptance test and use acceptance testing frameworks
Of course these clues also fits in non solo development :)
As a lone developer, I've found that your time is very expensive. This means that you have to balance sustainability and momentum - even though you are just one guy, you have to do things so that the you six months from now can go back and look at old stuff without wasting time, without spending so much time maintaining the systems that it compromises your flow.
Your question suggests that you are thinking in terms of fairly heavyweight tools and processes, but the 80/20 rule applies - for example, you can nail documentation well enough by TDD, using the doc tools of your platform to generate API docs, plus a Wiki for specs, lists, etc.
In that vein, I would suggest that you choose your platform carefully. The question about modelling suggests that you are using a platform that produce a lot of code and artifacts, but you may be able to get most of the functionality for much less management overhead elsewhere. Today I'm working on a .NET Web app that I wrote "the right way", but now realize that I could have delivered the same functionality much more efficiently in this case by using PHP with a PHP MVC framework to keep a clean structure.
Specific tools that I'd recommend:
A distributed version control system (much less overhead than centralized)
The most lightweight platform that you can use that has good tooling
A Wiki to easily capture and maintain small and large bits of content
Whatever testing framework that you can use, right from the start of the project
A lightweight TODO list system that you can access from anywhere
I used to work on a very small team (one dba and one C# developer). Even then I found it very useful to have written requirements, formal tests, source control and bug tracking (we used bug tracking for our features as well as bugs). It helped us to not forget anything and a year later when you were doing maintenance, you had something to research though to help you undersatnd what you did. Plus when the two of us left (as most people eventually move on) there was documentation there for the next person.
Because we don't have a good staging environment we often have to debug issues on our production systems. We have web, application, and database servers.
What kind of safeguards do you use to avoid accidentally making unintended changes to your production environment when doing this?
EDIT:
The application is a very complex B2B vertical web application. There is a lot of data involved. Some tables have close to 100 million records.
EDIT:
The staging environment we have in place does not have the capacity to mirror production. There are also hundreds of gigabytes of data files involved besides the actual database data.
EDIT:
We do use source control for the code but not for the stored procedures. There are some old stored procedures in source control but nobody keeps that updated anymore.
The main concerns are the database and data on the file system.
BTW, I am a consultant at this company, not an actual employee.
The most direct answer is: "Don't do that."
source control. nothing like a rollback when things to irreparably wrong. Also, a diff can help you replicate the changes to other production systems.
New production releases go via our systems guys, the programmers and developers can only request to make their new system go live, approval is needed as well, and we show that each change that has been made has been tested (by including a snapshot of all that was tested in this release in the production request).
We keep the previous production releases for fallback in case of issues.
If things do break (which they shouldn't do often with a proper testing procedure and managed releases) then we can either roll back, or hotfix. Often when things are broken in live and the fix is small, we can hotfix, then move the fix to test to do a proper test.
Regardless, sometimes things get by...
only allow certain accounts write access, so you have to log in differently to make a change
on web server, have two directory structures, that mirror each other, one where only one ID can write, the other staging dir, everyone can write.
on database server, have one production db, where only one ID can write, have a staging db where everyone can write. the staging DB can have nightly backup restored to it.
HOWEVER, if you have a bad query or some resource hog in your staging system resources will be pulled from production, and the machine could hang.
For Web and Application Servers, I would try to copy the environment to a new location (but on the same environment) and have the affected people reproduce behavior on the copy. This will at least give you a level of separation from accidentally screwing with 100% of your clients.
For Database Servers, I would configure user accounts on the production system to give them read only rights.
Read-Only/Guest accounts. Seriously. It's the same reason you don't always login as root or Administrator.
This is a tough thing, and it goes with the territory of "no staging environment."
For many reasons, it's best to have a dedicated (duplicate) of PROD you can use to stage deploys to...and to debug on, but I know that sometimes when you're starting out that doesn't work out as quickly or thoroughly as we'd want.
One thing I've seen work is the use of VMs: aside from the debug environment, you can create a mini-PROD in a VM and use that to debug. This may not be practical given the type of app you're developing, so additional detail in that area would be helpful.
As for avoiding changes to PROD during debugging: is there a reason you'd need to change anything to facilitate debugging? If so, that might be worth looking into solving another way.
Version control is immensely helpful for controlling changes to production environments - just make your production environment a working copy of the appropriate directory or directories from the repository. When you roll out an update, your source control system makes sure that ALL the changed files get copied. When an update breaks something, you can roll the production working copy back to the last revision which wasn't broken. Also, you can check your production WC out from a tag instead of from the trunk; that way you can decide which repository revisions to apply to the production environment by adjusting the tag.
If you're not familiar with the concepts of version control systems, I'd advise you to do some research. They're conceptually complex but incredibly useful and powerful. The Wikipedia article is a good place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
I'm sorry, you have to have a staging environment. There's no getting around this. If it means you have to cull the size of your datasets, then that's what you have to do. Use VMware and VMware converter to import the production systems during down-periods, if you have them (this is a many-hour process, so maybe not practical).
There are a certain class of problems you can't solve without having full access to production DBs (or a copy), performance is one of these. But you really should build a staging environment, even if it's on someone's desktop machine with a stripped down dataset.
That aside, I've had to live my life with a few of these in the past, and really, there's nothing you can do except lots of backups. Every change you make should be preceded by incremental backups. That way if you fubar'd something, the amount you've lost is not substantial. SQL server can take differential backups that limit amount of diskspace used for backups. Oracle can as well.
In case you really have no other choice, and it is likely to be a chronic situation... consider adding some way to the application data (files, or database) to flag a set of data as 'please god do not actually actively change production state with this data', combined with data dumps at critical positions in a process when this flag is activated, you may be able to exercise most of the production logic without the data actually being acted upon.