How to work as a team on FlexBuilder - java

As me and my friend are working on the same source code of a project on flex builder, I'm looking for a solution that makes it possible to work on different computers and edit the same source code.

You need to use some of the version control system (VCS). More info about it is here. As for me personally, I prefer to use Subversion. It is convenient and reliable. To work with it right from Eclipse (Flash Builder) you can use Subclipse or Subversive plugins. You can set up Subversion server on the one of the computers where everybody of the team member can have access.

Any version control system would work. Try CVS or SVN, the both have client for eclipse (which is flex builder)

Subversion and Subclipse is the ideal team solution for you. What you're asking for (some type of linked real-time editor) doesn't really exist anywhere (and probably wouldn't be terribly useful, otherwise we'd already be doing it).
So I think the answer to your question is, you just need to coordinate, plan, and communicate and divide up work so that you aren't stepping on each other's code changes. A decent architecture that doesn't cause your code updates to clash all the time is key. (Try dividing the project up into "modules" or sub-components, or even better (if this is applicable), just have one person focus on server-side dev (Java, Coldfusion, or whatever) and have the other worry about the Flex UI. This is one of the easier methods of keeping your client and server code somewhat decoupled, of course you still need to communicate and plan regarding the service interface.

Related

Setting up a new Java development shop

I'm setting up a Java development shop, currently just for myself as the only developer, but with hopes of needing to hire others as the business grows. Obviously I'm hoping to set it up right so that as more people come in, they can be productive right away. Please help suggest things I want to do, and tools to do them.
Here's what I think I need:
Distributed source code/revision control (Subversion?)
Bug tracking (does Trac do this?)
documentation (both internal and customer facing)
team communication
frequent automated building
maybe something to make sure automatic tests pass as part of the check-in process?
I like Hudson for Continuous Integration builds, and I like JIRA for issue tracking. Eclipse has plugins for both.
Hudson can watch software repositories and rebuild those projects that use the changed resources.
If you need more documentation than javadoc can cover (which is quite a lot) then consider a Wiki. Easy to use, and with a bit of structure you can massage it into a PDF.
Source control is a bugger. Too many to choose from. For a small development team start with either subversion or CVS (which is old but has supreme IDE support) and when you outgrow that and know your needs, then migrate to a better one. Most have migration tools from svn or cvs. It is harder to move from e.g. git to Mercurial, and you defintively want one with more than one implementation. Remember to have good backups of the source control repository - it IS your business. Frequent rsyncs, often tapes.
EDIT: You also want decent hardware. For the Continuous Integration server, the fastest build machine you can afford. For yourself the largest monitor you can afford (not in size, in resolution) for your primary monitor and as many extra monitors as you can afford to have (including adapters to your computer). I have found that Mac's use the pixels better than Windows, so that might also be a point.
My primary monitor is pivoted 90 degrees. This allows me to see many lines at once instead of a few long lines. (For some reason tradition says that editing areas should be wide and short, which may work in word but not in code where lines should not be wider than 72 characters)
Note on Eclipse: Use the source repository to have a single workspace per project! Use the Java Editor Save Function to reformat your code everytime you save - this makes it more readable up front, and goes better with the source repository as changes are marked in the correct version.
Edit: The reason for the CI server needing to be better than your development machine is because it will run all your tests every time you check stuff into your source repository. After a while, that WILL take time.
Personally I have found tests working well for library routines. They specify what works and what doesn't. It is harder to write good tests for whole applications, but you may want to look into that from the beginning, as it allows you to ensure that everything works for every check in. Write a comment if you are not familiar with the concept.
Whatever you choose for the individual parts, you will be glad if they can work together. Hudson knows how to talk to JIRA for instance. JIRA knows how to look in CVS.
To see what a big amount of people thinks to make a good software development environment read this article on the 12 points of joels test
This list does not include the things more important for you. Getting clients getting them to pay and manage legal stuff and taxes.
Most important, the right staff:
get great people who find work and handle customers (aka sales)
get software engineers who are smart and get things done (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/05.html)
get someone who knows about accounting and the local legal and tax regulations, so you don't get any surprises
Tools / Processes:
use a distributed version control system like git or mercurial
jira or the like for bug/issue tracking
continuous integration with hudson or cruisecontrol
wiki system to share the teams tangible knowledge
unit tests, clover, checkstyle, findbugs, ...
From a managerial point of view i would try
daily standup meetings (checkout scrum) to keep the team updated members to commit by saying what the did, do, and will do
timeboxed meetings, everything else sucks.
plan iterations/sprints
let team do task time estimations
pair programming (gets you better code)
code reviews (builds trust)
weekly in house "techtalks" to build a strong sense for the team
twitter like communication tool to keep all insync and informed with minimal distraction
develop team towards dynamic languages (groovy, scala, ...)
yourself, listen to what the guys at http://manager-tools.com/ have to say...
good luck!
We have been using:
version control:
subversion - Its not distributed but it is accessible over a few different protocols if firewalls are an issue. I'm not sure if distributed version control is necessary for us and reading Eric Sink's take is entertaining at least
issue tracking :
Fogbugz - You get some team discussion and communication for free with it because of the built-in wiki and discussion boards.
continuous integration:
CruiseControl - we had been talking about switching to Hudson, but Cruise is working really well right now - it runs our unit tests.
dev environment:
Netbeans and Eclipse - There is really no reason to pay for a Java IDE. An import point for getting going fast is that Netbeans and Eclipse both store all of their project data as text files which version control nicely. See this question. We had giant headaches when using an IDE which used binary project files.
profiler:
JDK VisualVM - Its free and it works. I used to really like YourKit, but VisualVM does so much now.
documention:
Combination of javadoc and fogbugz wiki pages plus the cruise dashboard for internal. For external we are using RoboHelp and we dislike it.
other tools:
Findbugs - huge help in catching things that are sometimes really stupid and sometimes amazing quirks that you'd have never realized. PMD is good for some of this as well.
We find chat tools to be really helpful for communication. We used to have access to Sametime and it had a giant conferencing feature that was really great. That was taken away for an unknown reason by the overlords though.
Here is what development stack our team of five developers is using over a year now:
Eclipse IDE (worked better for us than NetBeans)
Maven as a project comprehension and build tool -- simply a must tool!
Nexus: The Maven Repository Manager -- serves as a local Maven repo for proxying, and for managing internal and 3rd party libs; simple in use and is really necessary if you're going to use Maven
Subversion for source versioning -- was chosen mainly due to very good IDE support (Subclipse for Eclipse IDE)
Trac as a bug tracking and requirement management tool -- it nicely integrates with Subversion, has very useful plugins including blog and discussion plugins; also it can be integrated with Eclipse Mylyn.
Hudson as continuous integration, which nicely integrates with Subversion, Maven and Trac -- very valuable even for a small team.
Sonar code quality management platform -- a tool which integrates a large number of code quality matrix with intuitive web interface supporting code review and drill-down facility for analysis of the problems; integrates with Maven.
In our case this development stack is running under Ubuntu (workstation components: Eclipse IDE, Maven) and CentOS (server components: Maven, Nexus, Subversion, Trac, Hudson, Sonar).
As for the documentation, LaTeX (TexLive and Kile under Ubuntu) works just great supporting high quality PDF generation. The documentation source can be managed by Subversion the same way as the application source. Allows making of simple several page document and large multi-chapter books.
Hope this helps.
Distributed source code/revision control (Subversion?)
Subversion is good enough unless you want to use this as an opportunity to learn Git or Mercurial.
Bug tracking (does Trac do this?)
Trac works fine if you don't mind CamelCaseTurningIntoWikiWords. JIRA is fancier but (as noted) not free, and I find its data-ink ratio annoyingly low. Good once you learn which parts of the UI to ignore, though.
documentation (both internal and customer facing)
Internally, I would prefer communication over documentation unless you're really willing to commit to spending time keeping internal documentation updated. Javadoc your integration points (internal/external APIs), but try to keep your code and build scripts as self-documenting as you can.
That said, requirements docs are useful. I'd suggest using one tracking system for bugs and requirements. JIRA lets you create hierarchical issues, but I wouldn't bother with that till you need it.
Trac includes a Wiki, which can be handy although too much content will get stale.
Customer-facing docs are all over the map -- depends a lot on what you're doing. If you need big fat manuals (either printed or HTML or on-line help) FrameMaker + the DITA Open Toolkit is a nice combo, but a FrameMaker license is going to set you back $1000.
At a certain point this shades into corporate communications (marcom and PR), which are kind of a different animal.
team communication
Google Talk (or the instant messaging framework of your choice), email, and the occasional Skype teleconference are probably all you need.
An internal wiki and/or internal blogs might be nice but you probably don't need them right away, even once you've added a few more developers. Trac includes a wiki.
frequent automated building
Switching from CruiseControl to Hudson has made everyone here much happier -- two teams made the same decision independently and both are pleased with it. Hudson's flexible, easy to configure, and shiny.
I have yet to be convinced by Maven. I suspect its value depends on how much you want automated downloads of the latest versions of all your open-source libraries.
Edited (Feb. 2010) to add: Several months of Maven 2 experience now and I'm still not convinced. I think (like many frameworks, e.g. Rails) it may work well if you're starting from scratch and structuring your project according to its conventions, but if you already have your own structure in place it's a lot less advantageous.
maybe something to make sure automatic tests pass as part of the check-in process?
I'd advise against it. Most of the time the tests will be passing (or should be, anyway) As long as continuous integration notifies you quickly of failures, and you also have stable automated builds (a couple of days' worth of nightly builds, tagged iteration builds, etc.), you want more and faster checkins, not fewer and slower.
Subversion is not a distributed approach -- go for Mercurial, Bazaar or git instead!
Yes, Trac does do bug tracking (among other things -- check it out!).
Documentation is indeed a must but I'm not sure what you're asking -- tools for it? Why not just javadoc?
For communication you can have many tools, such as skype, email, IM of many kinds, and so forth -- you need to express your specific issues better to get specific advice, I think. Google Wave once it matures may be just great, but it's not production-ready yet.
For continuous build check out CruiseControl -- of course it also run tests &c.
You can write "triggers" for any of the build systems I've mentioned (and even good old svn;-) to run some test suite and reject the commit if it fails.
A few more items:
IDE
Billing Software - will you be charging by the
hour? If so you might want to track
what your time is going towards.
offsite backup of some kind.
Each one of your bullet points is probably worthy of a community wiki by themselves. Though in the end you might not care so much about best of breed in each area, but care more about how well they all integrate with your IDE or with each other.
Also, if you really want to get new teammates up and running quickly, consider putting as much of your dev environment into source control as you can, so you can just checkout your "dev-env" project onto a new computer and be up and running instantly!
One of your specs (in your question) says:
maybe something to make sure automatic
tests pass as part of the check-in
process?
I would suggest this is essential. Check out this matrix of continuous integration servers to see which one fits your requirements.
If you're starting off with just yourself as the only developer but scaling up at some point, depending on what it is you're developing, it might be worth to check out a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, like https://www.openshift.com or https://www.heroku.com/, both which offer developer accounts, but you can scale up to paid accounts as and when needed.
OpenShift have CI cartridges for Jenkins so you can spin up DVCS (git), CI using Jenkins, and an app server like JBoss AS or WildFly all in one go in a matter of minutes... depending on your needs and how much time you want to dedicate to setting this up yourself locally, I'd be more inclined to look at using a PaaS.
Rather than use Trac, consider Redmine. It allows you to have multiple projects stored in the one issue tracking system. You can then use the same setup for each project, rather than having to have N instances of Trac.
For starters, SVN will be enough for you. Definitely get a bugtracker. JIRA is good but isn't free. Enforce a rule "No commits without a bugtrecker ticket". This way you will be able to track the development. Do a cruise control and run a build + unit tests after every checkin into the main branch. Bigger changes should be made on a separate branch and then merged into the main branch.
Invest in a good IDE (I recommend intelliJ IDEA) and a good profiler (I recommend JProfiler). They're not free, but they are definitely worth their price.

Git or Mercurial usage in Java projects

Just wondering if any of you are using Git or Mercurial for your Java projects, or is Subversion still the most popular choice? I've been looking at github.com and bitbucket.org lately, but because the repositories might be private, I can't get a good indication of actual usage.
Be careful.
Do you remember how you felt about CVS after you used subversion?
You'll feel exactly the same way about subversion if you use git/mercurial.
Yeah, sure, you drop in for Christmas and the odd weekend,
but you can never go home again.
I don't think language should come into the equation. Both Mercurial and Git are functionally similar and conceptually very different than Subversion. It's more important that you select the right flavour of version control for the way you want to work.
As it happens, I use Mercurial with Java. I use Netbeans as my IDE which has built in support for both Mercurial and Subversion - both work well. I can highly recommend Bitbucket too.
After being fed up by the useless Subversion ignore filters my company moved one project to Mercurial. A couple of months later we'd moved all our code (mostly Java) over to Mercurial repos. Every second weekend we're now dancing naked around burning .svn folders chanting and screaming. Branching and merging is so much smoother than with Subversion. And it's really nice to work against a lightning fast local repo.
I suspect that there are more projects out there using Subversion than Git and Mercurial, but the trend seems to be going towards distributed version control systems.
Github also sells private hosting and it works really well. To view the available packages, go to your account page and click on Change Plan on the top right (In the Your Plan box). Github is often times the reason people try out and eventually stick with Git.
If you would like to see how Git compares to other version control systems, there is no better suited site than this one: Why Git is Better than X (Coincidentally, that site's source is on GitHub; there's a link to it at the bottom of the page).
I don't think that the language you are using for your project matters much. I've recently switched to Git and I'm still pretty new to it, but it really seems to make a lot of sense. I'm really liking the whole idea that every repository is a clone of each other, instead of having one central repository which would not allow you to work while offline (As is the case with Subversion). Despite the fact that most people nowadays always have internet access, it's also nice to know that there really isn't a single point of failure (Unless there is a single point to begin with, which there wouldn't be if you had hosting at Github for example, or as long as you had two repositories).
In the end I don't think it should be about choosing what is most popular (Which recently seems to be Git) but what works for you. I think most developers are beginning to move to a Distributed Version Control System like Git or Mercurial, and it seems like more are joining the Git camp, which will most likely mean that you will find more guides, tools, etc. for it, especially as more and more people continue to switch to it.
The crucial point for us is IDE support which needs to be rock solid. We are a small shop and do not have resources to deal with little annoyances (which is also why we are still on CVS, as we need as good IDE support as CVS before switching).
I believe others feel the same. The source repository is so crucial that any migration must be painless AND give benefits.
Personally, I believe the Sun endorsement of Mercurial will benefit it enormeously, perhaps into being a new defacto standard
Subversion is the best solution when it comes to solid IDE integration as every Java IDE supports it and Mercurial should be well suited for Netbeans users as the dev team of NB uses it as its source control.
Git just doesn't offer any advantage over Mercurial, only lack of Windows support and less tool support in general.

Cross-platform source control?

We're doing development for both .NET (Using VS 2008) and Java (using eclipse)
Currently, we're using CVS, but there isn't really a good plugin for Visual Studio 2008, so I'm looking at changing to something that has better support for VS 2008 and Eclipse.
My initial thought was SVN, as it is really close to CVS, but I'm a bit tempted to use something like Mercurial. I'm looking for something that is simple to use, and has good plug-in support for both platforms.
I can tell you that there are really nice plugins for Subversion for Eclipse and Visual Studio 2008 (AnkhSVN for Visual Studio).
You have to make sure to download the daily builds of AnkhSVN if you plan to use it with the most recent subversion version.
Additionally there are tools (http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/) to migrate your data from CSV to SVN.
For Mercurial oder Git - I don't have got any experience with those.
I think SVN will give you the smoothest transision - but it won't give you the "big revolution" (if this is what you are after)
We're a .NET, Java, and Rails shop
We used Subversion for years and its a fantastic system, did everything we thought we needed from an SCM. About 9 months ago we started playing around with Github.com whilst developing a Rails application (unavoidable in the Rails community).
Since then we've shifted over to Github.com completely using private repos for our closed-source commercial software developments.
Git has made us not break a build or clobber code in months - something that used to happen from time to time and made us loose a day's work trying to rectify the problem. Subversion doesn't provide you with the flexibility in your working methods that Git does. If you're in trouble (a broken build or a hot fix), Subversion won't help you it'll even work against you. Its branch/merge mechanism is very difficult to use because it doesn't keep track of the origin of the branch. Also when you merge back, your change history is modified such that all changes by the team in a particular branch are attributed to the user performing the merge. Git is also lightning fast as the whole repo that you work on is local, something that is very noticable when you're working from remote locations.
That said, Subversion will take you a week or two to get proficient in, Git takes at least a month, especially if you're coming from Subversion or CVS. If you pretend its just a more modern SVN or CVS, you'll get frustrated by the lack of improvement in your coding workflow and you'll become annoyed by the multitude of commands.
We have a 3-branch setup: hotfix<->master<->development. In normal conditions the dev team will work in the development branch. For each user story the developer will create a branch off development: development<->user story. When the story is finished the user story is merged with development and the user story branch may be deleted. This goes on and on, and master stays stable and unaffected until the build manager decides its safe to merge all the changes in development back into master. If in the mean time a customer phones and requires a hotfix, that too is done in isolation from master and can be merged into the rest of the codebase (master&development) at a suitable point in the future.
Now wrt to GUIs and SCM. We avoid them like the plague. GUIs are bad for working with SCMs. I know - controversial, but hear me out. The command line will slow you down more than a GUI does and when you're working with an SCM and there's a high-chance that you're going to do something bad or destructive to your central repo, slow is a good thing. Slow makes you think about your actions. All the typical GUIs that I've seen (EclipseSVN, TortoiseGit/SVN) all preselect your recent changes as being part of the commit you're about to make, whether those changes are ready to be committed or not. BAD!!!! You need to think about your commits and how lumpy or granular they need to be - command lines do a better job than GUIs in this regard.
All our .NET coders, who are naturally drawn to performing tasks via GUIs, use command line Git and used command line SVN before that, just for those reasons outlined above. It gave them a greater sense of control.
VisualSVN client for Visual
Studio
SubClipse for Eclipse
VisualSVN Server for the server
Having used svn with both Eclipse and Visual Studio, I find that the eclipse plugins (especially subversive) are generally more seamlessly integrated into the IDE. Ankh and VisualSVN both do a very good job, but I tend to prefer ToirtoiseSVN when working with .net. In Eclipse I almost never resort to ToirtoiseSVN.
To be honest though, I think the IDE plugin shouldn't drive your decision too much.
We use both VSS (and now subversion) for both J2EE and .NET on different projects. Both seem to work OK.
Why are you so hung up on IDE pulgins? Personally, I could take'em or leav'em... I put them in the "kitch which doesn't add any real value" bucket.
Cheers. Keith.
There is an ongoing debate between AnkhSVN and VisualSVN, if you decide to go with SVN.
Personally, I like Ankh. It is free, more intuitive for me, and provides more useful feedback on my project's state. I have had some corruption issues, though, but nothing that cost me more than a few minutes.
I use Vault from SourceGear. It's simple to use and has great IDE integration with Visual Studio and Eclipse. It's also fully tested on Linux using Mono.
It's free to use for single users, so you can try before you buy.
Check it out and see what you think. http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/
Personally, I like Perforce. Not free, but cross-platform and very good.
I'm no expert on this, but I have been woefully underwhelmed at GUI, or IDE SCM extensions. I've been using SVN, and GIT fairly nicely with projects hosted on sourceforge. My 2 cents worth. CHEERS!
Try Plastic SCM working on Linux, Mac and Windows. GUI based replication, branch explorer, efficient branching and merging (merge tracking included, move and renames too), ACL based security...

Providing a common interface to SVN and CVS

SVN and CVS are two very different systems that aim to address the same basic issue - source control.
They both work in distinct ways, so it's probably difficult to deal with them exactly the same.
What I'm wondering is, would it be conceivable to develop a programming library or API that exposes the same interface, but under the hood, can be set up to work with either an SVN or CVS repository?
I'm aiming to develop such a library in either .NET or Java (most likely .NET), but I wanted to get some thoughts on how feasible this would be, and if there's a better way to approach the problem.
The context of this is: I'm building a web-based service that will involve source control hosting, and I want to support both SVN and CVS so as to serve the largest amount of developers possible.
Personally I would ignore CVS for a new product. My feeling would be that the enormous extra effort to coerce it into looking like SVN would be better spent on other other stuff. I don't know your market, so I might be wrong, but that's got to be worth thinking about.
The MSSCCI API does something very similar:
http://alinconstantin.homeip.net/webdocs/scc/msscci.htm
The MSSCCI tries to make all source controls look the same from the perspective of the IDE.
viewvc lets you browse svn and cvs repositories. maybe there is an existing product which will already do what you want?

How can I make my development workflow more "enterprisey"?

I'm the sole developer for an academic consortium headquartered at a university in the northeast. All of my development work involves internal tools, mostly in Java, so nothing that is released to the public. Right now, I feel like my development workflow is very "hobbyist" and is nothing like you would see at an experienced software development firm. I would be inclined to say that it doesn't really matter since I'm the only developer anyway, but it can't hurt to make some changes, if for no other reason than to make my job a little easier and get a few more technologies on my resume. Right now my workflow is something like this:
I do most of my development work in Eclipse on my laptop. Everything is saved locally on my laptop, and I don't use a VCS, nor do I really backup my code (except for occasionally emailing it to myself so I can see it on a different computer - yeah, I told you my development environment needs work).
When I'm done with a project and want to deploy it or if I just want to test it, I use the built-in Jar tool in Eclipse to make an executable .jar of my project. If I use external .jar libraries, I use the Fat-Jar plugin to include those .jars in my executable .jar.
After I create the .jar, I manually upload it to the server via SFTP and test it with something like java -jar MyProject.jar.
Oh yeah, did I mention that I don't unit test?
The most glaringly obvious problem that I'd like to fix first is my lack of source control. I like git because of it's distributed nature, but it doesn't seem to integrate with Eclipse well and I've heard that it doesn't work very well on Windows, which is my primary development OS. So, I'm leaning toward SVN, which I do have some experience with. I do have my own personal server, and I think I'll use that for my source control, because I'd rather be my own admin than have to deal with university bureaucracy. I had some trouble setting up SVN once before, but I'll give it another shot. Maybe I'll also install something like Trac or Redmine for bug-tracking, todo list, etc?
What about building and deployment? There has to be a better way than using Fat-Jar and manually uploading my jar to the server. I've heard about tools like Ant and Maven - do these apply to what I want to do? How can I get started using those?
I suppose I'd eventually like to integrate unit testing with JUnit too. Even though it probably should be, that is not my primary concern right now, because so far my applications aren't terribly complex. I'd really like to work on simplifying and streamlining my workflow right now, and then I'll ease into unit testing.
Sorry for the long question. I guess my question boils down to, for a sole developer, what tools and methodologies can/should I be using to not only make my job easier, but also just to expose myself to some technologies that would be expected requisite knowledge at a dedicated development house?
edit: Thanks for the great answers so far. I didn't mean to suggest that I wanted to make my workflow "enterprisey" just for the sake of doing it, but to make my job simpler and to get a few technologies under my belt that are typically used in enterprise development environments. That's all I meant by that.
It seems to me like you actually have a pretty good idea of what you need to do.
Using Subversion (or other VCS) is a must. Although it might be wise to setup a separate SVN repository for your work-related code rather than using a personal one.
You can integrate Subversion with Eclipse using a plugin like Subclipse, which I've found works pretty well.
I'd definitely use Ant or Maven - my preference is Ant because it's more flexible, and I think it would suit your development style more than Maven as well. But you might also want to look into Apache Ivy, which handles dependency-management.
Basically you set up an ant task which runs your compile, build and deployment steps - so that when you create a final JAR package you can be sure that it's been unit tested as that is part of your ant script. The best way to get started with ant is to look at some examples, and read through the manual.
As for unit testing - you can gradually build up with unit testing. I would recommend using JUnit in conjunction with a code coverage tool such as Cobertura (which is easy to set up) - it will help you to understand how much code your tests are covering and is an indicator about how effective your tests are.
It may also be worth your while setting up something like Trac - it's important to be able to keep track of bugs, and a wiki is surprisingly useful for documentation.
In other words, all of this sounds like you're on the right lines, you just need to get started using some of these tools!
If you're really set on distributed source control, I'd recommend you look at Bazaar. Its GIT-like distributed source control that's designed around performing very high quality merges. Out of the box it works on all platforms including Windows and they have a TortoiseBZR client.
Really though, any source control is better than none. If you're the sole developer then there's no need for anything more complex than SVN. Large companies and projects use SVN all the time with little issue.
As far as unit testing goes, you should make yourself familiar with JUnit. The fact that you're aware of unit testing and know you should be doing it is still several steps ahead of most ad-hoc developers.
Use version control. Period. SVN has great intergration with Eclipse and Windows. Get the TourtisSVN client for windows and use the subclipse plugin with Eclipse.
I would recomend getting an external HD or use one of your companies' servers for putting your repository on and do backups often. Subversion works great with deployment and upgrading as well. Just learn how to do it and you will never look back :)
As far as Unit Testing, some people would say that is the way to go but I have not found enough evidence to start the practice myself. If sombody on this question can convince me otherwise then please do!
Also, don't look to "enterprise" your workflow - look to make it better. Practices that work well with huge teams and corperations may not work well for you. I am pretty much an only developer myself and know the situation you are in. Just try everything and only keep what feels natural after a while.
But make sure to just try SVN! If your company has a LINUX server with apache see if you can set up your server there using DAV-SVN.
:)
I think you answered most of your own questions.
Source control: pick SVN - easy installation, great integration with Eclipse (subclipse).
Use Ant to build your project and deploy it (SCP/SFTP task)
Keep all your settings (Eclipse project settings, build xmls, etc.) in SVN.
Use Bugzilla to keep track of your bugs/issues/requests/ideas.
It would be VERY beneficial to start working with version control. Start now, don't delay! Git is moving REALLY fast, and there's already a TortoiseGit being developed. SVN is still a great standard to work with. And I have not worked with Mercurial, but that's another VCS that's worth looking into.
Other than that, I don't see why your workflow has to be enterprisey. It just has to be efficient and comfortable. That said, I think you should try working with a simple text editor and compiling from the command line. Most of the world's best programmers still use that instead of an IDE, and it will help you understand the processes underneath your favorite IDE.
Check out the Pragmatic Programmers' Pragmatic Starter Kit.
It schools you on the important basics of software development that universities/etc. seem to pass up, like version control, unit testing, and project automation (in that order), and does it in a very approachable manner.
It will give you a solid base to keep going from there.
Take a look # Matt Raible's Appfuse.
It incorporates Maven and Unit Testing.
http://raibledesigns.com/rd/tags/appfuse
Although you put it as the last thing, I think you should start using jUnit without delay.
The reason is, it's probably the easiest of the ambitions you've identified, and the tools are almost certainly already built into your Eclipse build.
Make a new folder in your project called 'jUnit'.
Let's say you have an Employee class, with setAnnualSalary() and getMonthlySalary() methods.
Right click on the jUunit folder, new -> "jUnit test case". This will make a new class. Call it TestEmployee. Eclipse generates the boilerplate stuff for you, as usual.
Add a void method with a name beginning with 'test':
public void testSalaryCalc() {
Employee emp = new Employee("John Doe");
emp.setAnnualSalary(12000);
assertEquals(1000,emp.getMonthlySalary());
}
Right click, "run as" -> "jUnit test". (the first time Eclipse may prompt you to do some setup for the project. Just do what it says.)
If Employee works properly, you'll see a green bar.
Sabotage the Employee class, run the test again, and you'll see a red bar, as well as output telling you what the failure was.
Congratulations: you are unit testing!
Right-clicking on the parent directory and choosing "Run as jUnit test" will run every Testcase class in the directory. Later you can incorporate jUnit into your build process, but don't worry about that for now.
Autocomplete will show you all the variations on assert() you can use. You can read up on it, and aim towards practices where you write the test cases before the implementation that passes them. But just doing the simple stuff above gets you big benefits.
Once you have a set up version control and a few unit-tests, I would consider a continous integration server (you wanted to be enterprisey, right?).
Even if you are and stay the sole developer, this might help you to uncover a few errors. Things you forgot to check in or the likes. A CI-server regularly checks out all your sources, does a clean build an runs all your tests. It also contacts you in the case of errors.
This gives you the guarantee that you (or any other person) is able to check out your code and build/run your projects.
I would recommend to take a look at Hudson
Like others have said, you already clearly know what you need to do. A VCS is a must, CI or bug-tracking may be overkill (for a single developer a spreadsheet might suffice for bug-tracking).
One thing that might benefit you greatly is keeping an organized product backlog. In solo development, I find keeping focused on the high-priority features and avoiding feature creep to be one of my biggest challenges. Keeping a backlog helps immensely. It doesn't have to be much more than a prioritized list of features with some notes about the scope of each. At my workplace, we keep this info in Trac, but here again, a spreadsheet may be all you need.
And I want to put in a plug for unit testing, particularly Test Driven Development (TDD). Kent Beck's book is a good place to start. I find that TDD helps keep me honest and focused on what I really need to do, particularly on a single-developer project without QA. Sometimes it seems like the code writes itself.
You got some really solid answers so short post adding a link to an article about Test Driven Development which is an agile practice that will look good on your CV.
TDD
If you are running a Windows Server where you want to put your SVN server, use Visual SVN as the server. It is super easy to setup and use, it supports both basic authentication and windows authentication. It is also free to use.
Eclipse has quite a few modules to integrate with a SVN server, so use one of those, or the already suggested Tortoise SVN.
All the previous comments covered almost everything you might ever need :-)
I want to add another approach on how to develop (the development workflow).
I suggest that you read the following article and although it's a git workflow you can use the same idea for any other tool you might be using.
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

Categories

Resources