I have many bundles (let's say hundreds) and it is quite difficult to specify relation between bundles+features-distrubutions in UI. Image, at first I define all relations between bundles, features and distribution. Than I want to update some bundles... it is almost impossible to find them in current implementation of UI. They are not groupped and one list of all bundles without any search bar is really hard to work with.
Is there any support for a file based solution. For example Apache ACE would watch a certain folder containing distribnution's bundles. When ever I make a change there, it would be propagate it to all targets.
There is currently no file based solution that matches what you describe, however, I think there are still a couple of solutions that might help you:
There are two types of associations between artifacts and features in ACE: static and dynamic ones. The latter can be of help to you, as they always automatically bind to the highest version of a bundle. So, once you've made all your associations, you can simply upload a set of newer bundles and the associations will adapt.
There is also a REST API you can use to programmatically talk to ACE. You can use that to further automate your process.
That said, you have a valid point that it is difficult to keep an overview when there are a lot of artifacts in the first column. I would advise you to watch, or even contribute to the following issues that were all created to improve this situation:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACE-319
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACE-320
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACE-321
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I have created three different solutions for three different clients, but those solutions are for an app that have the same features, classes, methods, resolution, except for the images, XML resource files, and a web service reference, that are specific for each one.
I would like to have just one solution for all those apps, that I could open in VS2010 IDE for edition, without errors. So, when I need to build or publish an specific app, I just set the client which one I need to, and go ahead to building or publishing.
It is important to consider that XML file names will be the same, as classes and images names too. The difference will be the content, but the name will always be the same.
My intention is to reduce my effort to maintain many solutions, having just one solution to work with.
In my company, we will have more than those three clients soon, so I am worried about how to maintain that. The best way will be have just one solution and when I need to generate a new app for a new client, I have just to change/include a few things (like some resources and images) and compile to a new client folder.
Is it possible? If so how?
One option would be to have a master solution which had the following
A "Template" project that contained your actual application and all of the shared code
Projects for all of your clients
In the projects for your clients, you could have links to the files in your files that come from your shared project. Then, in each of those projects, you could add the files that are only specific to them.
With this kind of structure, whenever you made a change to your Template project, all of the client projects would be updated as well because they just have pointers back to the Template project.
A good reference for this kind of setup would be the Json.Net Code Base. There he has a solution and project for all of the different configurations, but they all share the same files.
In terms of ensuring that the xml files are named properly, you might just want to put some checks into your main application to ensure that it has all of the files needed or potentially add a check into your build process.
There are many ways you could look to tackle this.
My favorite would be to run some sort of pre-build step - probably outside of Visual Studio - which simply replaces the files with the correct ones before you do a build. This would be easy to automate and easy to scale.
If you are going to be building for many more than three customers, then I think you should look to switch from Visual Studio building to some other automated build system - e.g. MSBuild from the command line or from something like TeamCity or CruiseControl. You'll find it much easier to scale if your build is automated (and robust)
If you don't like the file idea, then there are plenty of other things you could try:
You could try doing a similar step to above, but could do it inside VS using a pre-Build step.
You could use Conditional nodes within the .csproj file to switch files via a project configuration
You could look to shift the client-specific resources into another assembly - and then use GetResourceStream (or similar) at runtime to extract the resources.
But none of these feel as nice to me!
Like most people we use third party libraries. Many have source which we keep in our VCS.
Currently if these libraries are updated, we need to pull the source manually and rebuild the binaries.
I am trying to find a way to instead reference them from the various solutions that use them, so that they will be automatically pulled from source control when you pull the dependant project, and automatically built if they are out of date. It would also be nice to be able to debug into them with the provided source.
The first problem I am having is that the libraries are not in the same solution root as the dependant projects. eg.
\Libraries
\External
\Lib1
Lib1.sln
\Products
\Product1
Product1.sln
Attempting to add Lib1.csproj to my Product1 solution gives me the warning:
The project that you are attempting to add to source control may cause
other source control users to have difficulty opening this solution or
getting newer versions of it. To avoid this problem, add the project
from a location below the binding root (C:\depot\Products\Products1)
of the other source controlled projects in the solution.
If I ignore this then I can set up build dependencies properly, but it still doesn't allow pulling the entire source tree in one go.
I was wondering how other people have third party libraries set up, particularly when there is source code. (We are using Perforce but I guess the question is relevant for any VCS)
One way to solve this in perforce is to put all modules / 3rdparty-software that are about to be reused to a separate location (depot), for examples "//shared" or similar.
Products (trees in your SCMS / perforce) can "link" the required modules by mapping them into the workspace. In perforce you can do that via clientviews.
If you have many people working on many products you'll need a easy mechanism to set up a personal workspace for a product properly (without requiring the developers to setup their clientview manually).
One possibility to achieve that is a small self-written tool/script that sets up a workspace and prepares the personal clientview based on a template that is located in the product-root and that defines what modules from the "//shared" depot need to be mapped to which location in the client workspace.
We are using this practice since years and it works fine. The danger is that the clientviews can get very complex.
I’m looking into the special folders which have enumerations, such as the LocalApplicationData. On my Windows 7 machine I’ve seen what’s there, and first I see several sub-folders that are GUID’s. I’ve no idea what they are, and presume them to be something that Microsoft puts in for whatever.
Next I see folders named after various companies, like Adobe, Apple, Citrix, Microsoft, etc. However, when I go into each of these sub-folders I’ll see more sub-folders, e.g. under Adobe I see sub-folders named Acrobat, Color, Reader 9.3 and Updater6. So when I go to re-write our application, do I adopt a similar structure, something like \OurCompany\App1, \OurCompany\App2, etc.? Or can we just put all of our various applications data into \OurCompany? What I’m asking for is what is standard procedure, or best practice?
If your company only makes one product and there is only going to be one version of it, then the structure doesn't matter - but it is better to plan for a more positive outcome :)
As you have seen from the other companies/products you have installed, having a folder structure that includes the company name, product name, and possibly version will all help to avoid clashes. You could avoid using folders and just use some file name convention, but you may find that you need multiple files in the future and it is simpler to start off with folders. They don't cost much.
As for the question of whether to include the version number or not, the key issue is whether it makes sense to have multiple versions of the same product co-existing at the same time. Not all products need this and some apps will upgrade the settings or have code to read data in the old format. Bear in mind that for data under the roaming area (ApplicationData not LocalApplicationData) may be visible to different versions of the same application installed on different machines.
There doesn't seem to be any tried and true set of best practices to guide you on how to setup your solutions, projects and the assemblies they output. Microsoft seemed to have tried back in the VS.net days, but they have since retired this content. For every method I read about I read another that claims the opposite is better, or a post that only concerns itself with "if only Microsoft would..." but really provide no solutions.
It appears there are many ways to do this that all seem to work for various groups in their situations, therefore I thought I would ask what conventions YOU use and why they work for YOU in your situation.
I hope that this will provide several good conventions for different situations, small development groups and projects to large diversely located development groups and projects.
What conventions do you use to...
name your solutions, and why?
name your projects, and why?
name your assemblies, and why?
know when to create a new project or add to an existing project, and why?
know when to split up a solution into smaller solutions, and why?
know when to break up a project into multiple projects, and why?
Just to be clear, the WHY is just as import as the HOW in these answers. There are many answers posted on the how here and other places, very few say why they use one convention over another.
That's a very broad question, but a good one. I will start with a simple structure that I use for ASP.Net web projects (MVC will look completely different).
Solution naming isn't a big deal to me. I tend to create solutions for a specific purpose, and add existing projects to the solutions. If your solution is over 15 projects (just a rough number) consider adding some of those projects as references. Most people don't need to work on more than 15 projects at a time.
Project Naming is a big deal to me.
// class library that supports the site itself and abstracts
// more complicated UI logic into a separate place
Company.ProductName.Web;
// website
Company.ProductName.Web.UI;
// main business object library for product
//
// of course, you can have as many of these as needed.
Company.ProductName;
I try to use enough folders in my projects so that all files in a folder can easily be viewed without scrolling the solution explorer.
My typical web project looks something like this. Note the different in casing to represent namespaced/compilable resources versus those that are not.
client (css, javascript)
config (private, custom config files, if any)
Content (Master Pages, ASPXs and ASCXs, broken into logical folders)
Handlers (ASHXs and such)
images
MSBuild (build scripts)
WebServices (these should ONLY be small services that are directly related to the site in question. Otherwise, break them into a separate project).
I've started using partial classes more and more to create comprehensive classes that can do many things without having the code be cluttered. For example, I recently created a web service whose single purpose is to return JSON to the client, but the logic is spread across almost a dozen partial classes to organize it better.
Hope that gets you started.
In our case we keep our project names quite identical to namespaces that we chose for particular assembly. That way it becomes easy to map location of a class file in physical folder. For example - CompanyName.BusinessLine.BusinessService or CompanyName.Framework.Security. So if a developer is looking at CompanyName.Framework.Security.Cryptography.cs, he can immediately figure out the project and open that project.
As Tim says, this is very broad. A few things to note:
A solution is usually just a collection of projects. Many solutions can include the same projects, for example. As such, it doesn't matter too much: if you don't like a solution name, you can throw it away with no refactoring at all.
Like Pradeep, I tend to name projects with the top level namespace they contain. "Deeper" namespaces end up in subdirectories, so classes within the Foo.Bar.Baz namespace might be in the Baz directory of project Foo.Bar.
I tend to split into projects across:
Elements of reusability (e.g. one assembly for a UI, one for a reusable set of model classes, one for a reusable general purpose utility classes)
Elements of deployment (e.g. one for production, one for testing, in pairs)
Elements of reference (e.g. if you have a common assembly Skeety.Common with some interfaces used by other classes, there might be a Skeety.Common.Testing assembly containing types which help you to test classes using Skeety.Common). This leads to these rules:
Production assemblies can only refer to other production assemblies
Testing assemblies can only refer to production assemblies and other production assemblies
Test assemblies (the ones containing the tests themselves) can only refer to production and testing assemblies, not to other test assemblies
No circular references are allowed, obviously
In many cases it actually doesn't matter too much how you split things up - but it does help to make the design cleaner as you work out the dependency layers (so a business logic assembly shouldn't have a reference to a UI assembly, but vice versa is fine).
Having too many project can definitely slow you down, both in terms of build times and just working out where everything should be. Having too few projects makes the design less clear. Over time you're likely to get more of a gut feeling for how things should be laid out - but I'm blowed if I'd claim to always know the best course of action :)
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When spliting a solution in to logical layers, when is it best to use a separate project over just grouping by a folder?
By default, always just create new folder within the same project
You will get single assembly (without additional ILMerge gymnastic)
Easier to obfuscate (because you will have less public types and methods, ideally none at all)
Separating your source code into multiple projects makes only sense if you...
Have some portions of the source code that are part of the project but not deployable by default or at all (unit tests, extra plugins etc.)
More developers involved and you want to treat their work as consumable black box. (not very recommended)
If you can clearly separate your project into isolated layers/modules and you want to make sure that they can't cross-consume internal members. (also not recommended because you will need to decide which aspect is the most important)
If you think that some portions of your source code could be reusable, still don't create it as a new project. Just wait until you will really want to reuse it in another solution and isolate it out of original project as needed. Programming is not a lego, reusing is usually very difficult and often won't happen as planned.
denny wrote:
I personally feel that if reusable code is split into projects it is simpler to use other places than if it is just in folders.
I really agree with this - if you can reuse it, it should be in a separate project. With that said, it's also very difficult to reuse effectively :)
Here at SO, we've tried to be very simple with three projects:
MVC Web project (which does a nice job of separating your layers into folders by default)
Database project for source control of our DB
Unit tests against MVC models/controllers
I can't speak for everyone, but I'm happy with how simple we've kept it - really speeds the builds along!
Separating features into projects is often a YAGNI architecture optimization. How often have you reused those separate projects, really? If it's not a frequent occurrence, you're complicating your development, build, deployment, and maintenance for theoretical reuse.
I much prefer separating into folders (using appropriate namespaces) and refactoring to separate projects when you've got a real-life reuse use case.
I usually do a project for the GUI a project for the business logic a project for data access and a project for unit tests.
But sometimes it is prudent to have separation based upon services (if you are using a service oriented architecture) Such as Authentication, Sales, etc.
I guess the rule of thumb that I work off of is that if you can see it as a component that has a clear separation of concerns then a different project could be prudent. But I would think that folders versus projects could just be a preference or philosophy.
I personally feel that if reusable code is split into projects it is simpler to use other places than if it is just in folders.
I really think it is better to split the project as well, but it all depends on the size of the project and the number of people working on it.
For larger projects, I have a projects for
data access (models)
services
front end
tests
I got the model from Rob Connery and his storefront application... seems to work really well.
mvc-storefront
Separating your source code into
multiple projects makes only sense if
you...
... More developers involved
and you want to treat their work as
consumable black box. (not very
recommended) ...
Why isn't this recommended? I've found it a very useful way to manage an application with several devs working on different portions. Makes checkins much easier, mainly by virtually eliminating merges. Very rarely will two devs have to work on the same project at the same time.
If you do go for creating several projects, make sure everyone who adds code to the solution is fully aware of the intention of them and do everything you can to get them to understand the dependencies between the projects. If you have ever tried to sort out the mess when someone has gone and added references that shouldn't have been there and got away with it for weeks you will understand this point