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What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
How has your team solved this?
See this previously asked question:
Multiple Programmers in Software Development. How do we work on the same code and ensure it is always updated?
There are a lot of good answers to this question, and they apply to small and large teams.
For source control, we use Svn with the Tortoise SVN client. We've used other source control systems in the past, and have found this one to be the best for our needs.
I would recommend you use SVN for source code management, if you are using visual studio you can get numerous plugins for IDE integration.
http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://www.visualsvn.com/ = SVN Server & VS Integration
Try to set up Continuous Integration for this you can use Cruise Control .Net or Hudson. Cruise control can be set up to do a build on each check in and the history is shown on a web page.
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Welcome+to+CruiseControl.NET
http://hudson-ci.org/
For requesting new functionality you could use a ticketsing system, wiki or Google Wave any one of these should enable you to keep track of requirements.
Hope this helps.
You can pretty much use any tools for small development teams you wish. There are lots of options.
Personally, my team uses SVN for code, and Trac for tracking - mostly because it's very cost effective for a small team. However, there's nothing C#/.NET specific about that setup.
If your team has MSDN subscriptions, you might want to consider Team Foundation Server. It has many features for integration with Visual Studio that are (arguably) superior to some of the alternatives.
You should use one of the many available source control repositories. Trust me, you won't know what you did without it :)
There are plugins for Visual Studio for working on a team, but personally I've never used them.
I've done team projects with both Subversion and Mercurial... just make sure to check in the solution and project files, and all related code.
Everyone will also need to be running the same version of Visual Studio.
For requesting new functionality, you might want to consider an external solution like Trac or Bitbucket or some other free system that includes issue tracking.
Well, how small? I work on a team of 5, and we communicate well with IM, or just dropping by and talking. That being said, the team is pretty responsible, so you can trust everyone to carry their weight. I would suggest you use subversion for source control if your company doesn't have anything.
We're a team of 3 C# developers.
For version control, we use AnkhSVN, an open source SVN client that integrates with Visual Studio.
For project management, issue tracking and feature requests, we use Redmine.
What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
Mercurial -- once you've used a DVCS, it's hard to imagine going back. Everybody uses their own favorite editor; usually, that's Emacs, which comes with support for many VCSs, including Mercurial.
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
Changes are tracked in version control. You can look at the changesets as you pull them, or browse the web interface. Or just ask people at lunch what you're working on -- no developer is an island. New functionality is tracked, along with bugs, in the bug tracker.
How has your team solved this?
We're a small team using C#, but nothing here is specific to C# or small teams. I've used very similar systems with other size teams, and other languages/platforms.
We have a team of three and currently use Source Gear Vault for source control and Fogbugz for bug/feature tracking. Source Gear integrates into Visual Studio nicely and works over http which makes it easy to access from anywhere. Check ins and outs can be done directly in Visual Studio or a standalone client.
Source Gear also integrates with Fogbugz.
Used to use Visual Source safe and would never go back...
I work on a small team of 1-5, depending on the project.
What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
We use Git with Github for new projects, and TFS for some legacy work.
I see a lot of people recommending a certain provider without telling you why. I have used TFS, SourceGear, SVN (a little), and Git. I prefer Git because it stays out of my way. Git is command-line based. My typical source control workflow is a handful of simple commands, but learning those commands took a few tries.
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
We use Pivotal Tracker for story writing and organizing priority.
Related
I'm a hobbyist programmer and I've created an application for my office. Every so often I need to improve the code, add features or fix issues that come up under certain circumstances - I've found bugs or ineffective coding even after 3-4 months of heavy usage of the application. The thing is that whenever I modify the code, visual studio saves the changes. This means that if I want to use the program I'll have to be really fast in coding and debugging or it won't build - and I won't be able to use it...
Is there any way to keep the old version of the program without having to save the complete project folder elsewhere? Like creating a new version but keeping the option to go back to the old - working - one...
What you are looking for is called source control.
There are many systems out there, two popular ones are subversion and Git.
Used properly, you will have a full history of each file you have in your project.
There are two other answers here regarding source control at the time I write this, but there is another angle on this as well.
You're executing your production copy from the development directory. Don't do this.
When you have developed the program to a stable version, make a copy of it somewhere else and use that copy. In this way you're free to keep developing on the software without destroying your ability to keep using the existing stable version.
As for source control, you should definitely use that as well if you're not already doing it. It would, among other things, allow you to go back and hotfix the stable version with minor bugfixes while still doing major rewrites of the software, as well as the features others here have mentioned, full history of your project, "unlimited" undo, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean that Visual Studio saves the code when you modify it. It does by default save when you build, but I don't think it saves while you're typing.
Anyway, what you're looking for is called a source control system.
You can try Team Foundation Service from Microsoft.
It works fine and you can share youre project whit colleagues.
http://tfs.visualstudio.com/
EDIT:
This is a free of charge option you can use, until you want to share youre project with more than 4 persons!! than you have to pay for TFS
You need source control.
If your project is open source you can use codeplex, it's an open-source Website where engineers and computer scientists share projects and ideas. Its features include wiki pages, source control based on Mercurial, Team Foundation Server or Subversion (also powered by TFS), Git,discussion forums, issue tracking, project tagging, RSS support, statistics, and releases
If you don't want to share your code you can use Team Foundation Server
i have a project where i do something i have same copy from another who have do something in it later i have a thing to do currently.
so that's three copy and i am unsure that i am not confused with it. sometime i call wrong copy for finding the thing i want from them.
without using any software outside our office window any trick to manage all project or how i can manage them and make them one copy.
the same problem with some other problem come with when the same script used in two software , website who are used same script with have a small difference in both.
so i want to know how exactly all other manage them. i want to have a answer with .net plateform.
There are several source control solutions that have plugins to integrate directly with Visual Studio. I would recommend looking into Subversion. Currently at my office we use Vault, but it has some short comings, especially when it comes to renaming or moving a file and then editing it prior to a check in.
http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/
http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/
I recently started a small pet project. It's written in C# with ASP.NET MVC3. As it's grown, my needs for source control also has grown. Here's what I've done:
Day one, I placed my project in a Dropbox folder. That way, I could reach my project files from all my computers (and even my iPhone).
A few weeks later, when I first had to make some serious changes and neede a fallback, I created a Mercurial repository in my Dropbox folder and commited all my code. I've got a blogpost on that here: http://csharptutorial.blogspot.com/2011/06/using-dropbox-with-mercurial.html. Mercurial is a great versioning system, because it doesn't require a server installation and your repository is copied in full to all locations where it's checked out.
Now, I'm looking at moving my project over to BitBucket (http://bitbucket.org/) where you also share and discuss code with others.
A good alternative to Mercurial is Git, using github.com in stead of bitbucket.org. Both have a learning curve, but they both represent modern version control tools and is well worth having a look at.
Source control and discipline.
You need to get an approach and method for managing your source. A source control system is essential for this. I use SVN and Ankh, as does Clayton.
However, you need an approach for using this. I always have branches. You can have development branches and merge these changes into a release branch when your code has passed all the tests. This way takes a discipline and time, but you need to do this to build quality into your system.
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Scenario
I have recently graduated from university with a degree in Computer Science.
My degree mainly focused on C#.
I want to learn more and get better at what I do.
I notice a lot of companies always want their developers to know and use 3rd party tools.
Question
If I was developing C# Windows Forms applications, what 3rd party tools/libraries/controls etc. would be of use to me and for what reason?
The answer to this question depends on how you define "3rd party tools". I usually take that to mean products from companies other than MS but excluding free open source software. When it comes to 3rd party products (for-profit) I cannot think of any common products that I've used or been asked to learn over the last decade that I've been doing .Net development. Most MS shops I've worked with turn to MS solutions (for good or ill depending on your personal view).
That said, in recent years the number and quality of the various FOSS solutions out there has risen dramatically. I use the following whenever I can:
Logging: log4net
Inversion of Control Container (plus more): Castle Windsor
ORM: NHibernate
Unit Testing: NUnit
Mocks for unit testing: Rhino Mocks
For most of these projects there are many other options, these are just my current favorites. Learn to use these (and WHY they are needed) and you'll be many steps above the average .Net developer (sad but all to true).
The DevExpress and Telerik controls are pretty popular, but not free.
Some 3rd party .Net component providers that I've seen used in companies most often:
Telerik
Infragistics
They are not free. These kinds of providers offer large libraries of controls that you'd pick from to achieve your specific goals.
Many good suggestions here, I would also add a few other categories of tools:
Software configuration management/version control: CVS, Subversion, Git/Mercurial/Bazaar, Perforce, etc. Good use of SCM is essential for professional software development.
Issue tracking: Bugzilla, Trac, FogBugz, etc. I would also consider an issue tracking system to be a critical piece of software.
Documentation: Like it or not, it becomes very handy to know your way around Microsoft Word. Knowing how to manipulate styles, headings, numberings, cross-references, etc. can make your life a lot easier when writing documentation.
You'd probably want to have a look at Silverlight. It's a Microsoft alternative to Flash and uses C#. WPF are also something to look at for interfacing.
It might also be worthwhile looking at MOSS.
I've always liked the Xceed controls. In a lot of cases you could always build your own controls. The biggest advantage to using some of these packages is that it saves you the time and they have also been well tested (if not by the company then by the people that are using them).
I've used a couple of different packages over the years and found that if you can use one it's not that hard to use another. The biggest thing is knowing what is available out there so you don't spend two weeks building something that you could have just paid a few hundred dollars for.
You should know about resharper (helper for VS)
Crystal reports - for reports,
Some Grid tools (google it, there are many - I wouldn't bother to learn until need one)
and study advanced topics like: WCF, WPF
Cruise control or other building tool, bugnet or trac - bug management tools...
And of course - AQtime or other Profiling tools.
.NET Reflector
Hawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor
Infragistics
I'd throw mono in there as well. Since you're looking to give yourself an advantage over other developers and improve your value to companies - having cross platform experience is advantageous as well.
There are a lot of 3rd party controls that will help you achieve more in less time. But I don't think many of them will really improve your coding skills (calling someone else to do all the work doesn't teach you much about how to actually do thise things yourself, but familiarity with them and the ability to learn new libraries is a good skill to practice)
Resharper is good for improving your coding skills (code analysis), coding style (autoformatting), and it's a great refactoring tool. It's expensive, though.
Microsoft do some free code analysis tools for Visual Studio (FXCop for code analysis, and there is also a Static Analysis addin) which will help improve your code quality.
AtomineerUtils (my own addin) encourages excellence in documentation and generally improves your code quality (by encouraging good naming style, etc)
Focus more on the tools used in the software development process. Enterprise Architect is used for designing applications from a high level. Once you design you application's business classes you can generate your classes' skeletons. You will be responsible for you code implementation once the class structure has been created.
For implementation purposes look at several C# platforms mentioned earlier. You want to focus Microsoft's WPF, WCF, WF. WPF is ok but it can not be used prior to .net 3.0 so check your client's requirements. I'm working on a project that targets the .net 2.0 because of restrictions by the client so the applicaiton was designed in WinForms. Silverlight is an option as well.
In addition, read up on design patterns as this will help you avoid creating high maintenance applications. A good book is Design Patterns in C#.
For testing look at the Visual Studio TFS system or third party programs like NUnit. You can google NUnit. This will help you ensure that your code does what you intended it to do on a granular scale.
Also, take a look at some of the source control software avaialbel like Subversion, Rational ClearCase, Visual SourceSafe. For large projects with multiple developers you'll need a source control tool that has multiple branches so that each developer has his or her own sandbox within the source control system.
I'm a big proponent of ComponentOne and use it in my new applications regularly. I find that if you're proficient in .NET winforms in general, C1 are very easy to pick up on and usually do what you want with little effort.
A couple people mentioned Telerik. I demoed it fairly extensively and found them to be a bit more complicated because they contain a ton of configuration options for look and feel. Awesome if you're some sort of graphic designer, but unless you're building the next Windows Media Player, I think it's overkill. The learning curve for the theming seemed a bit much for what I was trying to accomplish.
C1 and Telerik both run about $1000 to $1300 depending on what license you get.
You should also check out the Krypton toolkit. It free and has a lot of nice controls.
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I'm a C# developer looking to get into home automation as a hobby. I have done a little research, but was wondering if anyone knows of a good .NET library that supports Insteon hardware. I'd rather use Insteon than X10 due to reliability issues.
My ultimate objective at this point is to have a simple home automation server (maybe lights and climate control) with a secure ASP.NET web application interface. I'm more interested in actually building it and learning about it rather than finding an existing solution.
Thanks for any suggestions or comments.
Edit:
Thanks for the help, everyone.
Does anyone have experience with Z-wave technology? Seems promising - appears to be higher quality hardware, includes a core library, supports .NET, etc. ControlThink appears to have a pretty good controller and SDK.
Here's an interesting application to consider: Stall Status: Know Before You Go
We found there really wasn't much developer support for Insteon unless you wanted to buy their SDK and agree to their rather heavy-handed license agreement. Rather than go that route, we wrote our own .NET library called FluentDwelling and we open-sourced it. You can find a download link, and some get-you-started code samples if you follow that link.
The source code comes with a full suite of unit tests (requires NUnit, also free), so you can add improvements and make changes if you like.
I would avoid X10 like the plague. Between things like modern TV's and power strips, bridged power junction boxes and just plain strange wiring, X10 signals tend to just "disappear" and never get to their destination.
If you really want to give X10 a shot, I've got a box of X10 stuff in the garage that was worth $250+ new and it's all completely useless in my house, so you can have it. Some of it worked in my old house, but it won't so much as turn a light on 2 outlets away where I live now.
X10 is viewed by most modern electronics as "noise" on the line (which, technically, it is) and something to be filtered out rather than passed along or left alone.
I can't remember if it covers the specific technologies you mention but you should definately check out this episode of .NET Rocks. They talk about all the different stuff you can do with home automation and a lot about how to do it. I believe one of the main points was that Microsoft Robotics Studio was a good tool to use, as it uses a lot of the same abstractions as you would otherwise use.
I know it's been a long time since this post was made, however I was wondering if you'd picked a route, and what you've ended up doing with home automation since.
I've been doing this kind of stuff with many of the technologies available, but I've always done it on top of a product called homeseer. .net plug-ins and vb.net and c# scripting can be done on top of this foundation. I've been thinking of rolling my own similar to what you were describing. Any thoughts, tips, decisions you've made etc?
A bit off topic, but listen to the latest episode of dot net rocks, one of the finalists of my .net story built an home automation solution that really made me want to dive into home automation again.
Totally awsome solution.
http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=518
I think this would bee a place to start
insteon sdk
Some research via Google looking for an Insteon SDK only yields stuff from way back in 2005. There's only information on serial port interfaces (no USB) and the only language mentioned is something called DockLight scripting that also looks like it hasn't been updated since 2005.
X10, on the other hand, boasts support for C++, VisualBasic, VB Script, and JavaScript. No .Net listed, but VisualBasic/VB Script likely implies a COM object you can easily import for use in C#. They're also much more USB friendly, and the kit costs 1/4 of the Insteon kit ($50 vs $200).
If you were actually building a product I would understand the reliability concern. But since this is a home project I think you'll have much better luck with X10.
you can try C-bus by Clipsal(schneider) it's free.
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My boss thinks the VS 2008 IDE Window Manager(autohiding, docking of Solution Explorer, Properties, etc) is the best thing since sliced bread. I can't find a control that resembles that functionality in the Toolbox. Is there a control like that available that you know of? Or should I go ahead and implement it myself? Btw, we're using VS 2008 Express.
You don't have to create something that looks like the VS window manager - you can use the actual VS one with the Visual Studio Shell.
I believe it's aimed at creating developer tools, but I see no reason why it would have to be used that way. It's a bit like the Eclipse RCP, as I understand it.
I implemented in a real project the DockPanel Suit by Weifen Luo that worked very well and it is in production right now on a quite complex application (it is an application for the financial market that had very strict UI requirements in terms of performance and stability). It is really a very good implementation.
I even had to do some custom modifications and found the code to be very understandable and well written.
I'm sure there are several comparable comercial implementations from companies like Infragistics and similar, but if you are short on cash or just don't care for commercial support services for your components you can give it a try:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dockpanelsuite
I just hope you're not developing a standard line of business app for non-technical users.
I was involved in a line of business app. that tried using the Magic library (from memory) and implemented property windows etc, so it looked "just like Visual Studio".
Then we released a prototype to the end users and they hated it. These were non-technical finance and accounts type people, some even power users. The major complaints were "windows don't stay in the same place", "too easy to accidently drag windows", "too fiddly" "my window keeps disappearing" etc etc.
Just because your boss thinks the Visual Studio IDE is great doesn't mean a thing if your target user group don't.
Don't forget that Visual Studio was designed/built by developers for developers. If your users aren't going to be overly technical it might be very wise to do some prototyping with them first.
There is a very good opensource project just for this. Look on SourceForge for DockingSuite Dock Panel Suite.
You should check out SandDock. The older versions were freely licenced (dunno if they are still available) and the newer versions are relatively cheap, especially considering the amount of time/money/sanity they would save you.
I would strongly recommend against trying to roll your own VM component. There is just too much work involved, and it wouldn't be worth it, if it wasn't your primary product.
Magic Libary
Dock Panel Suite
Dock Container
I personally think Magic Library is the best. Can't remember if it's OSS though.