Re: your mail

From: d. hall (dhall@sunspot.tiac.net)
Date: 12/11/95


ð thus on Mon, 11 Dec 1995 21:41:13 +0100 (MET), Wout virtually scripted...

>> I was wonderring what you imps use for a software development tool.  And
>> what problems you run into when you have a lot of coders

Wout> pico :) I'm looking in to emacs now... but I can't really say we over
Wout> here use a real softdev tool....

pardon me while i gag... *smile* pico?!?  i'll settle for vi... but i draw
my line at pico.

personally i use emacs, since... well it does everything for me, including
flossing my teeth when i'm busy.  anyways the PRO's emacs offers are
plentifold... (C-mode for auto-indenting of source source, some minor
syntax checking, colour-highlighting when in X, builtin interface with
compilers, builtin interface with GDB, blah blah...)

the CON's... it's unwieldy size at times, even on my linux box, it crunches
up 1.5 megs of memory (this is with ELF shared libs), and it's complexity
for the novice, who would _rather_ not learn a whole new language in order
to use an editor.


>> touching same code.  Or any solutions you can offer.  I heard that
Wout> Problems that can arise are two people doing work on some file at the
Wout> same time, so that there are two versions or the first one gets
Wout> overwritten by the second or things like that. The first problem is
Wout> solved with diff and the second by giving everyone a private dir to
Wout> mess around with.  other probs: You write some code, put it in the
Wout> program, want to compile and it doesn't compile because someone else
Wout> had the same idea but buggy code. A bit of yelling always solves that
Wout> for me :)

>> program RCS with linux distrubition doesn't seem to compile on Solaris.

Wout> What is RCS?

RCS is a specialized "Revision Control System".  it's meant for large
project groups with several people working on the same files.  it will
"lock" files, which means only ONE person can be working on a specific
file, unless they INTENTIONALLY break that lock.  RCS is nice in that it
keeps the revisions stored in file, at a fraction of the cost in disk space
as far as backups are concerned.  it's proven to be very effective,
although some fore-knowledge is required so you don't shoot yourself in the
foot.  as far as the linux RCS package, you might want to grab RCS at the
source site and try it with solaris (i think SCCS might work with solaris).

RCS for the single user is good as a checkpoint tool, to maintain so level
of sanity to revisions.  i lose track of how many alterations i make, when
i find a colossal blunder back in version 1.563, i revert back to it =).
every production step (point in whcih you feel the code is stable) you just
place that as the temple to work from.

d.
--
``if you're so perfect, try walking on water some time.''
					- another anonymous quote



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