I am a intermediate-level developer (I think). I almost always work alone.
I have always just save my code to my hard drive and then published it to my server. I almost always over-write old code. If I make a big mistake I will get a backup restored from my web host. Obviously this can be a pain and cost time.
I know there must be a better way. I guess I could just save copies each time I change a file but that seems like it could get confusing too if I have 1000 different versions each time I make a minor tweak.
What is the best solution? It seems GIT type services may be more hassle than it is worth in my situation.
You work on the wrong way...
Try a CVS, that kind of software administrate versions and changes by itself.
Read about how implement a SVN solution, that will help you a lot.
GIT, Codeplex and other repositories are based on that kind of tools.
the problem in steps:
Source control
Google has a full list of articles, if you use GIT, this is my favorite:
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
and see this other
www.bignerdranch.com/blog/you-need-source-code-control-now/
but Source control isn't just a backup.
See
Is there a fundamental difference between backups and version control?
Backup your Source
You need a copy of your code in a backup server, site or external dispositive.
GIT or Subversion is for source control not for copy.
see "Backup Best Practices: Read This First!"
and set a tool for this work periodically.
Software Configuration Management
You need set a system for the software change, step by step, start with the user needs and cover all methodology work
see redmine ...
Related
So, as a developer, you probably write a small amount of code, and then test it to see if it works before you move onto something else. This is because you don't want to write thousands of lines of code and find that doesn't work. Stating the obvious here. So myself and a few others(soon) are working on a php application where I want to implement some form of version control, most likely subversion since we all know how to use it, somewhat. My question is how do I implement this writing process stated above with writing, and then testing.
My idea was to set each developer up with their own workstation including a web server, and php/mysql etc.. so they can checkout the repo and then test on their own computer as they are writing. I'm really looking for some direction here with that. Currently we aren't using version control as there are only two developers and we simply use a shared directory thats located on the web server. When we make changes, we can view them immediately on the web server. Any input on this? Whats the best way to handle multiple developers when in the development process of an application?
There are a number of different ways to approach this:
1) Each developer has a whole web server stack on their machine, deploys to it, and tests there, then checks in working code.
2) There's a separate test/integration machine. Developers take turns deploying to that machine, do their testing, then check in working code.
3) You use branches in Subversion. Development happens on a branch, and it's OK to check in broken code on a branch. There may be a branch for each developer, or a branch for each feature, or whatever. The developer checks in code onto the branch, checks it out on the separate test machine, tests, fixes, then checks the working code onto the trunk.
Which one is right depends on how big your team is and how complex your server setup is. Choose one that makes sense for your team.
You'd need to start thinking about a build server, using a piece of software like cruisecontrol which monitors for source code changes and is then able to build, run tests and deploy you're code (ed: in a manner as close to live like as possible!).
I'd highly recommend integrating a build server as soon as possible, otherwise you'll find out down the line that automating something that somebody has been doing manually for the last 5 years is somewhat difficult :)
You might also find that each dev ends up with their own methods of deployment and custom environment, it'd be far better to centralise this in one place and then have other devs use the scripts and from that deployment if they want to run the same process locally.
Configuration management is something you want to get right to begin with!
One important thing with CI: You only want to push working code to the central repository. This requires a private repository for each developer, but has the advantage that you never break trunk.
Git and Mercurial are the most obvious tools, and can work with svn as a central repository.
To prevent merge conflicts, there's one trick to prevent pushing broken code to central: always pull/merge from central first, and frequently, prior to pushing:
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureBranch.html
And have a look at our sponsor: http://hginit.com for examples of workflows with multiple developers.
The company I work for is building a managed force.com application as an integration with the service we provide.
We are having issues working concurrently on the same set of files due to the shoddy tooling that is provided with the force.com Eclipse plugin. If 2 developers are working on the same file, one is given a message that he can't save -- once he merges he has to manually force the plugin to push his changes to the server along with clicking 2 'Are you really sure' messages.
Basically, the tooling does a shoddy job of merging in changes and forces minutes of work every time the developer wants to save if another person has modified the file he's working on.
We're currently working around this by basically 'locking' individual files by letting co-workers know who is editing a file.
It feels like there has got to be a better way in this day and age. Does anyone know of a different toolset we could use, process we could change, or anything we can do to make this easier?
When working with the Force.com platform my current organisation has found a number of different approaches can work depending on the situation. We all use the Eclipse Force.com plugin without issues and have found the following set ups to work well.
We have a centralised version control system that we deploy from using a series of ant commands to a developer org instance. We then depending on the scope of the work either separate it off into chunks with each developer having their own development org and merging the changes and testing them regularly, or working in a single development org together (which if you have 2 developers should be no major problem) allowing you to have almost instant integration.
If you are both trying to work on the same file you should be pair programming anyway, but if working on two components of a similar system together, sharing the same org can allow you to develop in a fast and flexible manner by creating the skeleton of the system you wish to use and then individually fleshing out the detail.
I have used both methods extensively and a I say, work really well depending on the situation.
Each developer could work in separate development sandbox (if you have enterprise edition, I think 10 sandboxes with full config & limited amount of data are included in the fee?). From time to time you would merge your changes (diff tool from any version control system should be enough) and test them in integration environment. The chain development->integration->system test->Q&A-> production can be useful for other reasons too.
Separate trick to consider can be used if for example 2 guys work on the same trigger. I've learned it on the "DEV 401" course for Developers.
Move all your logic to classes. Seriously. They will be simpler to unit test too.
Add custom field (multi-select picklist) to User object. Values should be equal to each separate feature people are working on. It can hold up to 500 values so you should be safe.
For User account of developer 1 set "feature1" in the picklist. Set "feature2" for the other guy.
In the trigger write an if that tests presence of each picklist value and enters or leaves the call to relevant class. This wastes 1 query but you are sure that only the code you want will be called.
Each developer keeps on working in his own class file.
For integration test of both features simply set the multiselect to contain both features.
I found this trick especially useful when other guy's code turned out to be non-optimal and ate too many resources. I've just disabled his feature on my user account and kept on working.
This trick can be to some extend applied to Visualforce pages too (if you can divide them into components).
If you don't want to waste query - use some logic like "user's first name contains X" ;)
We had/have the exact same problem, we have a team of 10 Devs working on a force.com application that has loads of apex classes (>300) and VF pages (>300).
We started using Eclipse plugin but found it:
too slow working outside of the USA each time a save is called takes > 5 sections
to many merge issues with a team of 10 developers
Next we tried developing in our own individual sandboxes and then merging code. This is ok for a small project but when you have lots of files and need changes to be pushed between sandboxes it becomes impossible to manage as the only thing worse then force.com development tooling, is force.coms deployment/build tools. No automation its all manual. No easy way to move data between sandboxes either.
Our third approach was to just edit all our VF pages and Apex code in the browser. (not using their embedded editor that shows up in the bottom half of the page because that is buggy and slow) but just using the regular Editor under setup > develop > Apex classes. This worked ok. To supplement this we also had a scheduled job that would download all our code and save it into our SVN repository. We also built a tool that allow us to click a folder on our desktop and zip its contents and deploy it as static resources for us.
However this approach still has its short comings, i.e. it is slow and painful to develop in the cloud, their (salesforce) idea of Development As a Service is crazy. Also we have no real SCM we only have it acting as backups.
Bottom line is force.com is a CRM and not a Development platform, if you can? run, flee, get away from it as fast as you can. Using it for anything apart from a CRM is more trouble then it is worth. Even their Slogan "No Software" makes me laugh everytime
I'm not familiar with force.com, but couldn't you use source control and pull all the files down from force.com into your repository. Then you could all do your work, and merge your changes back into the mainline. Then whenever it's necessary push the mainline up to force.com?
Take a look at the "Development Lifecycle Guide: Enterprise Development on the Force.com Platform". You can find it on developer.force.com's documentation page.
You might want to consider working on separate static resources and pages and then just being careful when editing objects, classes etc.. If most of your development happens on client side code (page, staticresource, lightning component/app) you might be interested in this project: https://github.com/bvellacott/salesforce-build . In any case I strongly suggest using version control. If not on a server then at least locally on your machine, in case your peers overwrite your work.
I am rather new to Sitecore and would like to know a bit more about the regular approach to a new project. I'm therefore willing to listen and try out some of the experienced Sitecore developers solutions. I have alot of questions, i won't ask them all. I am just very curious to the approach other people have.
What would be the best approach to start a Sitecore project?
How would you set your project up?
What will be your approach looking at the recycling of code in future projects?
In short: What experiences do YOU have (if you have worked with or are working on Sitecore projects) and how would you recommend other people to work with Sitecore.
Right now we are busy on building Sitecore blocks that we can just recycle in other projects but i know for sure there are 1001 handy tips and tricks out there. I hope we have some Sitecore pro's # stackoverflow that could help a bit.
Here is some general setup info, based on how we do things.
Subversion
This is not Sitecore specific but we set up our repository like this
branches - This is used for working on big updates to the site that may take a while. Say for example I wanted to update how all of the sidebars on the site worked, and this was going to take a few weeks to complete. What we do is create a new branch, and set up another sitecore instance for this dev branch and do what we need to do. When it is complete we merge it back into the trunk for testing and deployment.
tags - This is used for keeping a copy of code that will never be merged back into the trunk (that is the difference between this and branches), so for example when we deploy an update to a site we can create a tag of said code so we can go back to it if necessary.
trunk - The active code, anything checked in here should always be deployable.
The Trunk
This is where we are actively developing/fixing bugs, depending on which part of the project that we are on. We set it up something like this (as an example the project is called TheProject)
We keep our solution file at the root of this folder, this will reference the various libraries in the src folder as well as the web project in the website folder.
docs - A place to put documentation about the site. I strongly suggest that as you complete features/sections you write up a little guide about any special knowledge needed for it to work. So say I am working on a featured content box on a landing page. This box will automatically pull some content unless it is explicitly overridden. What I do when I complete something like this is I write a guide for the customer, using a lot of screenshots. I send the guide to the customer as well as put it in the docs folder. This both helps the customer train their staff, as well as helps new developers come up to speed with how things are done.
lib - This is where we keep any DLLs we are going to need to reference in our projects.
test - A place to put unit tests.
src - This is where we keep our project specific library code. So in here we would have a folder called TheProject.Library, and in there would be the visual studio project for said
web/Website - This is where we have Sitecore installed and is the root of the site. In here we have a project called something along the lines of TheProject.Web. In the project we add all of the general stuff like the web.config/layouts folder and so on.
General Sitecore Code Library
One the best things you can do is from the start setup a general Sitecore library that can be added onto over time. Then when you write any code for a project that is not only applicable to the project, you can add it there. It may seem obvious, but this will really help in the long term. You will end up with much more solid code, see link text .
So when we are done with all this we have something like this as a solution/project structure
TheProject (The solution)
TheProject.Library
TheProject.Web
MyCompany.SitecoreLibrary (our general sitecore library)
Tools
This is another general thing, but I find it can really help speed up Sitecore development. If you find yourself doing something over and over in Sitecore, using API write a tool to do it for you. This not only helps with solving whatever problem you are tackling, but also helps to get you more familiar with the API.
Resharper
This is more of a general .NET development suggestion, use Resharper(http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/index.html). I am sort of a a Resharper fan boy, it makes so many things with development easier and quicker. In my mind the biggest advantage though is how easy it makes refactoring code, which is really important to do over time to keep things clean and understandable.
I hope some of this helps.
Gabe
This is, as you said, quite a big question. Here are some of my thoughts:
Developing Environment
First of all when I start a new project I install Sitecore on my developing environment and I make sure everything works. Either during installation or after I place the databases on a separate SQL-server and change the connectionstring accordingly.
I open up Visual Studio and create a solution and include the files needed. I create some kind of HelloWorld rendering and try building the solution so that I can verify that everything is working as it should.
When everything is up and running I create a zip-file of the whole solution, including the data-folder. Now it is time to add this to some kind of version control system, in my case Subversion.
I add the zip-file to subversion and also add all files that I think will be changed during the project, usually I tell subversion to ignore the sitecore folder, this speeds up performance drastically when checking in files.
After I perform a commit-action the other team members of my project can check out the code and start developing (after unzipping the zip-file, off-course)
We all work towards the same database although this goes against Sitecore recommendations, we havent had any problems with this approach however items in GUI created/changed by one developer take some time before it is created/changed for all the others.
We could off-course develop several different projects using the same Sitecore installation but since almost all customers use different versions of Sitecore we have found this approach a bit cumbersome.
Often we set up an automated build-server but this is a whole other issue.
Reusable code and renderings
I would like to say that we create neat packages based on the same codebase that gets reused between projects but unfortunately we are not there yet. Today it is a lot of cut and pasting between solutions.
Uploading code to customer
This is done via sitecore packages, normally with some kind of dynamic selection for what files to include, say all ascx-files in a specific folder changed the last 5 days.
There you have it.
Take a look at this series.
Especially the component architecture part have increased our level of reusability.
When you create your Visual Studio's project in Sitecore's web root folder and you will keep all Sitecore's dlls files inside bin directory, don't forget to add to project's references all these files:
bin\ComponentArt.Web.UI.dll
bin\HtmlAgilityPack.dll
bin\ITHit.WebDAV.Server.dll
bin\Lucene.Net.dll
bin\Mvp.Xml.dll
bin\Newtonsoft.Json.dll
bin\RadEditor.Net2.dll
bin\Sitecore.Kernel.dll
bin\Sitecore.Logging.dll
bin\Sitecore.NVelocity.dll
bin\Sitecore.Zip.dll
Because when you CLEAN your project and you will have reference only Sitecore.Kernel.dll (in most of cases), you will lost most of dlls from bin directory!!
We have a number of developers located around the world which we need to collaborate with.
Our functionality required is:
Some sort of white board, which multiple users can view, and update.
A private wiki.
A ticket system for managing workload.
A source control system would be nice, but not required.
Ideally this would already be hosted somewhere (and free), alternatively if any software
can do this, which is also not expensive, that would be fine.
Ideally all this functionality would run over standard http.
I like Assembla, among others it offers:
- SVN
- Trac
- MessageBoard
- Wiki
and some more features. Also you get 200MB free space for every project...
Base Camp may provide some of what you need: http://www.basecamphq.com/
Slicehost + Trac + Subversion/Mercurial/Git/Bazaar.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any open source whiteboards :(
The advantage of configuring your own machine is that you can configure whatever you want. It would be a real shame if your development team decided that bzr was the way they wanted to go, but you're hosted project management app didn't support it very well.
GitHub
The free plan is for open source but it can be used for private projects too. Includes:
Wiki
Issue tracker
Source control
I was introduced to VisualAssist a few years ago and for me there's no going back. Are there any other tools I'm missing out on?
If you're a vim user, ViEmu is indispensable. It's a plugin available for Visual Studio (SQL Server and Office as well, although it's sold separately) that transforms the editor into Vim.
Another plugin by the same company is Codekana. In its current incarnation, it spruces up code structure considerably, and makes reading code much more pleasurable. Based on several chats with the author, he's planning on growing it into other areas as well.
BeyondCompare : Life-changing folder & file diff with many installable extensions for additional file types. Don't know what I'd do without it.
There's a few things that get installed on every computer I use for development:
ExamDiff is the best light-weight diff program I've found.
Tortoise SVN is the best version control client
Perforce is a way to make your life worse when your company inflicts it upon you.
Just after installing VisualAssist I go after WinMerge, which also significantly simplified my life.
I tried Resharper for a while. It was great but too expensive for my taste and I could not get my employer to purchase it when the trial expired. You might take a look.
I own all of these tools and use them on a regualar basis.
Resharper
CodeRush/Refactor Pro!
NDepend
Gallio/MbUnit