Here is what I'm looking for:
I'd like to separate pieces of functionality into modules or components of some sort to limit visibility of other classes to prevent that each class has access to every other class which over time results in spaghetti code.
In Java & Eclipse, for example, I would use packages and put each package into a separate project with a clearly defined dependency structure.
Things I have considered:
Using separate folders for source files and using Groups in Xcode:
Pros: simple to do, almost no Xcode configuration needed
Cons: no compile-time separation of functionality, i.e. access to everything is only one #import statement away
Using Frameworks:
Pros: Framework code cannot access access classes outside of framework. This enforces encapsulation and keeps things separate
Cons: Code management is cumbersome if you work on multiple Frameworks at the same time. Each Framework is a separate Xcode project with a separate window
Using Plugins:
Pros: Similar to Frameworks, Plugin code can't access code of other plugins. Clean separation at compile-time. Plugin source can be part of the same Xcode project.
Cons: Not sure. This may be the way to go...
Based on your experience, what would you choose to keep things separate while being able to edit all sources in the same project?
Edit:
I'm targeting Mac OS X
I'm really looking for a solution to enforce separation at compile time
By plugins I mean Cocoa bundles (http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/LoadingCode/Concepts/Plugins.html)
I have worked on some good-sized Mac projects (>2M SLOC in my last one in 90 xcodeproj files) and here are my thoughts on managing them:
Avoid dynamic loads like Frameworks, Bundles, or dylibs unless you are actually sharing the binaries between groups. These tend to create more complexity than they solve in my experience. Plus they don't port easily to iOS, which means maintaining multiple approaches. Worst, having lots of dynamic libraries increases the likelihood of including the same symbols twice, leading to all kinds of crazy bugs. This happens when you directly include some "helper" class directly in more than one library. If it includes a global variable, the bugs are awesome as different threads use different instances of the global.
Static libraries are the best choice in many if not most cases. They resolve everything at build time, allowing code stripping in your C/C++ and other optimizations not possible in dynamic libraries. They get rid of "hey, it loads on my system but not the customer's" (when you use the wrong value for the framework path). No need to deal with slides when computing line numbers from crash stacks. They catch duplicate symbols at build time, saving many hours of debugging pain.
Separate major components into separate xcodeproj. Really think about what "major" means here, though. My 90-project product was way too many. Just doing dependency checking can become a very non-trivial exercise. (Xcode 4 can improve this, but I left the project before we ever were able to get Xcode 4 to reliably build it, so I don't know how well it did in the end.)
Separate public from private headers. You can do this with static libs just as well as you can with Frameworks. Put the public headers in a different directory. I recommend each component have its own public include directory for this purpose.
Do not copy headers. Include them directly from the public include directory for the component. Copying headers into a shared tree seems like a great idea until you do it. Then you find that you're editing the copy rather than the real one, or you're editing the real one, but not actually copying it. In any case, it makes development a headache.
Use xcconfig files, not the build pane. The build pane will drive you crazy in these kinds of big projects. Mine tend to have lines like this:
common="../../common"
foo="$(common)/foo"
HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS = $(inherited) $(foo)/include
Within your public header path, include your own bundle name. In the example above, the path to the main header would be common/foo/include/foo/foo.h. The extra level seems a pain, but it's a real win when you import. You then always import like this: #import <foo/foo.h>. Keeps everything very clean. Don't use double-quotes to import public headers. Only use double-quotes to import private headers in your own component.
I haven't decided the best way for Xcode 4, but in Xcode 3, you should always link your own static libraries by adding the project as a subproject and dragging the ".a" target into your link step. Doing it this way ensures that you'll link the one built for the current platform and configuration. My really huge projects haven't been able to convert to Xcode 4 yet, so I don't have a strong opinion yet on the best way there.
Avoid searching for custom libraries (the -L and -l flags at the link step). If you build the library as part of the project, then use the advice above. If you pre-build it, then add the full path in LD_FLAGS. Searching for libraries includes some surprising algorithms and makes the whole thing hard to understand. Never drop a pre-built library into your link step. If you drop a pre-built libssl.a into your link step, it actually adds a -L parameter for the path and then adds -lssl. Under default search rules, even though you show libssl.a in your build pane, you'll actually link to the system libssl.so. Deleting the library will remove the -l but not the -L so you can wind up with bizarre search paths. (I hate the build pane.) Do it this way instead in xcconfig:
LD_FLAGS = "$(openssl)/lib/libssl.a"
If you have stable code that is shared between several projects, and while developing those projects you're never going to mess with this code (and don't want the source code available), then a Framework can be a reasonable approach. If you need plugins to avoid loading large amounts of unnecessary code (and you really won't load that code in most cases), then bundles may be reasonable. But in the majority of cases for application developers, one large executable linked together from static libraries is the best approach IMO. Shared libraries and frameworks only make sense if they're actually shared at runtime.
My suggestion would be:
Use Frameworks. They're the most easily reusable build artifact of the options you list, and the way you describe the structure of what you are trying to achieve sounds very much like creating a set of Frameworks.
Use a separate project for each Framework. You'll never be able to get the compiler to enforce the kind of access restrictions you want if everything is dumped into a single project. And if you can't get the compiler to enforce it, then good luck getting your developers to do so.
Upgrade to XCode4 (if you haven't already). This will allow you to work on multiple projects in a single window (pretty much like how Eclipse does it), without intermingling the projects. This pretty much eliminates the cons you listed under the Frameworks option.
And if you are targeting iOS, I very strongly recommend that you build real frameworks as opposed to the fake ones that you get by using the bundle-hack method, if you aren't building real frameworks already.
I've managed to keep my sanity working on my project which has grown over the past months to fairly large (number of classes) by forcing myself to practice Model-View-Control (MVC) diligently, plus a healthy amount of comments, and the indispensable source control (subversion, then git).
In general, I observe the following:
"Model" Classes that serialize data (doesn't matter from where, and including app's 'state') in an Objective-C 1 class subclassed from NSObject or custom "model" classes that inherits from NSObject. I chose Objective-C 1.0 more for compatibility as it's the lowest common denominator and I didn't want to be stuck in the future writing "model" classes from scratch because of dependency of Objective-C 2.0 features.
View Classes are in XIB with the XIB version set to support the oldest toolchain I need to support (so I can use a previous version Xode 3 in addition to Xcode 4). I tend to start with Apple provided Cocoa Touch API and frameworks to benefit from any optimization/enhancement Apple may introduce as these APIs evolve.
Controller Classes contain usual code that manages display/animation of views (programmatically as well as from XIBs) and data serialization of data from "model" classes.
If I find myself reusing a class a few times, I'd explore refactoring the code and optimizing (measured using Instruments) into what I call "utility" classes, or as protocols.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
This depends largely on your situation and your own specific preferences.
If you're coding "proper" object-oriented classes then you will have a class structure with methods and variables hidden from other classes where necessary. Unless your project is huge and built of hundreds of different distinguishable modules then its probably sufficient to just group classes and resources into folders/groups in XCode and work with it that way.
If you've really got a huuge project with easily distinguishable modules then by all means create a framework. I would suggest though that this would only really be necessary where you are using the same code in different applications, in which case creating a framework/extra project would be a good way to effectively copy code between projects. In practically all other cases it would probably just be overkill and much more complicated than needed.
Your last idea seems to be a mix of the first two. Plugins (as I understand you are describing - tell me if I'm wrong) are just separated classes in the same project? This is probably the best way, and should be done (to an extent) in any case. If you are creating functionality to draw graphs (for example) you should section off a new folder/group and start your classes and functionality within that, only including those classes into your main application where necessary.
Let me put it this way. There's no reason to go over the top... but, even if just for your own sanity - or the maintainability of your code - you should always endeavour to group everything up into descriptive groups/folders.
Related
I have few models, which I've been implementing for a while in every sandbox project and it got me thinking. What is the difference between few models with constant implementation Vs. my own lib, which would in theory contain same files.
Question #1 : Is there any difference in exec time & page loading between few model objects and same objects from library?
Question #2 : Why should I use library instead of few models (or vice versa)?
Question #3 : If there isn't any difference in this two, should I create my own lib just for easier composer implementation OR some sort of custom-sandbox git rep with models is better option?
It isn't or is negligible. Your classes always have to be included. It doesn't matter if they are included by composer autoload or nette RobotLoader.
If particular functionality can help other people, you can help someone a lot by creating a library. If it is too specific for your app, go with libs dir or something directly in app, you can change functonality more easily later if needed.
I would say both. Creating and maintaining sandbox is much easier than lib shared by many projects. With lib, you need to keep backward compatibility for example. Also, if you have many non-related classes, it doesn't make much sense creating one library from them. Reather create more libraries implementing specific functionality. For example, logging class which will include your LogModel. But before you start, try search packagist if there already isn't lib you need. For logging, Monolog can be usefull. Your calendar class is great candidate for library.
Even if I don't understand your situation completely, I'll try to answer as best as possible:
1) not really, it's class autoloading, no matter where it is located
2) I recommend moving code to library when you find that some classes have common meaning, that could be abstracted to some directory, for e.g.
FileManager
ImageResizer
ACL
CMS
...
3) If your code is stable and consistent (= doesn't change in app), I'd go for package. If you have to customize it, I'd keep it specific for every app.
This all depends on your specific classes. The best would be to see whole project and problems you have.
There is code that I want to include in most of my projects. Things like AFNetworking, categories for CoreData and unit testing, etc.
It seems logical to include all of these in a static library, and then use it in each project. I've noticed though, that many third-party libraries (like AFNetworking, and it's predecessor ASIHTTP) are included in projects by copying over all of their source files and then manually linking the necessary libraries to the project target.
This seems to me like the easiest way. It took a fair amount of time to figure out how to include an existing static library into a project. Even after I knew how, it still seems like a pain to do it for every new project. Also, the header search paths that you specify are to a local directory with the static library's files. Wouldn't it be easier, and is there a way, to copy the static library's files into the project? This is the same idea as including the class files directly like most libraries seem to do already, but it would be more organized because everything would be lumped into one library project, instead of having class files everywhere and having to include every one of them.
Static libraries feel like they should be the right way to go. Make a library that can be used with all projects that includes classes that every project will need. Makes sense. I am just conflicted because it seems like the right way to go is to leave everything out of a 'formal' library, and just copy over all of the class files instead.
I guess I am just looking for what experienced developers find to be the best option.
I would be among the first to admit that the process of referencing a static library in Xcode is not entirely intuitive. However, using a static library is the best option, without a doubt.
The main reason is maintainability: when you copy source code of a library to many places, you must remember to update all of them to the latest code when you upgrade to the next version of the library. This may be a rather error-prone process, especially when the underlying library source changes significantly (e.g. new files are added, old files are renamed, etc.)
There's a halfway solution - make an XCode project that builds your static library from source and put that into a shared repository (ie.. git submodule etc) which is included from each project's main repository.
Each of your projects would include this submodule and project. Then they get the latest source code each time they pull that submodule. If you set this up as a build dependency it will build a static library the first time you build and then XCode is smart enough just to include it each subsequent build so you get the benefit of fast build times.
You also get the advantage of having the source right there for stepping though / debugging.
If it's in a separate XCode project and a new version of a library adds or removes a source file you would only need to change that shared project - all your individual projects wouldn't change at all.
What about using CocoaPods? This tool does exactly what you want in a declarative way: you have a file (Podfile) where you declare your dependencies, and the tool downloads all the dependencies and builds a static library that gets added to your project.
I would agree that static libraries feel like they might be the correct way to go for a number of reasons, but can also introduce some issues.
The positives would be creating an easy way to add a library to a project. Although not completely intuitive, it is rather trivial to add a static library to a project after one does it a few times. Add the files, add the search path, done. This could also be useful in certain source control situations. Also, updating a library may be easier.
I think the real problem here is for the open source community. By including, say AFNetworking, for example, as a static library, you lose all access to the implementation files. This is a great feature of including source rather than a library. It lets you change code to how you see fit, and hopefully give back.
My application has a plugin system that allows my users to write their own plugins that get loaded at runtime. Usually this is fine but in some cases two plugins use the same libraries that will cause a collision between those two.
Example:
Plugin A wants to use TouchJSON for working with JSON and thus the creator adds the TouchJSON code to the plugin source and it gets compiled and linked into the plugin binary. Later Plugin B also wants to use that same library and does exactly the same. Now when my app loads these two different plugins it detects this and spits out an warning like this:
Class CJSONScanner is implemented in
both [path_to_plugin_a] and
[path_to_plugin_b]. One of the two
will be used. Which one is undefined.
Since my app just loads plugins and makes sure they conform to a certain protocol I have no control over which plugins are loaded and if two or more use the same library.
As long as both plugins use the exact same version of the library this will probably work but as soon as the API changes in one plugin a bunch of problems will arise.
Is there anything I can do about this?
The bundle loading system provides no mean to pacifically resolve name conflicts. In fact, we're told to ensure ourselves that the problem doesn't happen, rather than what to do if it happens. (Obviously, in your case, that's not possible).
You could file a bug report with this issue.
If this is absolutely critical to your application, you may want to have bundles live in separate processes and use some kind of IPC, possibly NSDistantObject, to pass the data from your program to the plugin hosts. However, I'm fairly sure this is a bag of hurt, so if you don't have very clearly-defined interfaces that allow for distribution into different processes, it might be quite an undertaking.
In a single-process model, the only way to deal with this is to ensure that the shared code (more precisely, the shared Objective-C classes) is loaded once. There are two ways to do this:
Put the shared code in a framework.
Put the shared code in a loadable bundle, and load the bundle when the plug-in is loaded if the relevant classes aren’t already available (check using NSClassFromString()). The client code would also have to use NSClassFromString() rather than referring to classes directly.
Of course, if you aren’t in control of the plug-ins you can’t enforce either of these schemes. The best you can do is provide appropriate guidelines and possibly infrastructure; for instance, in the second case the loading could be handled by the application, perhaps by specifying a class to check for and the name of an embedded bundle to load if it isn’t available in the plug-in’s Info.plist.
Suppose I am working on exposing some of my server-side classes to a GWT application, but certain parts could be done much better using GWT-specific components (like JSNI, for instance).
What are some techniques for doing so without being too hacky?
For instance, I am aware of using a subpackage and using the <super-source/> tag, but this requires the package names to be different, which causes eclipse to complain. The general solution in the community is to then tell eclipse to use that as a source folder, but then eclipse complains about there being two classes with the same name.
Ideally, there would just be a way to keep everything in a single source tree, and actually have different classes which apply the alternate implementations. This would feel like a more OO approach.
I would like to add a suffix to a class like _gwt which accomplishes this automatically, and I know I could write a script to do this kind of transformation, but that is a kludge for sure.
I've been considering using Google's GIN/GUICE libraries for my projects in general, and I think there might be some kind of a solution there, but I am not sure as I have not thoroughly investigated it.
What are some solutions you have tried in the past on GWT projects?
The easiest way to have split implementations is to use super-source code, but only enough to instantiate a uniquely-named instance or dispatch to a different method. Ideally, the super-source implementation is just a few lines long, and not so bad that you can't roll it by hand.
To work around the Eclipse / javac double-mapping and package name issues, the GWT source uses two top-level roots for user code: user/src and user/super. For example, the AutoBeans package has a split-implementation of JSON quoting and evaluation, one for the JVM and one for the browser.
There's really no non-kludgy way to implement super-source, as this is a feature way outside what you can specify in the language. There's nothing that lets you say "use this implementation in this environment" without the use of some external tool.
I have developed a large MSBuild project to build a portion of our solution. There's a lot of things going on-- XML parsing/replacing, Windows services, remote copy, etc. As a result, the file has grown really difficult to manage, despite my best efforts to add decorations in comments.
As a goof, I broke out the main chunks of functionality out into separate files, like "XML.targets", "Services.targets", etc and imported them into the main "Build.proj." The build still worked and I immediately found it to be much more manageable.
However, all the info I have read on the Import feature of MSBuild is that it should be used to import reusable targets, ie those than can be consumed by -any- MSBuild project without any modifications. The separate projects I'm creating here are the opposite-- specific to one project and will break by default if use with anything else unless modified.
So I guess what I'm asking is, even though I can... should I? Is there an inherent danger in using Import strictly for the purpose of organizing a large project? Is there a better way to do this?
Thanks
No, there is no inherent danger. I think it's a good decision to split large project into several .targets files specific to certain operation since it reduces overall complexity. The idea of creating reusable targets means that they should have as little dependencies on the other parts as possible. By analogy you can think of separate .targets files as classes. The less coupled they are - the better. Because modification in one targets file will less likely break the whole process. You can take a peace of paper, draw your targets files as points with your main project in the center and draw all the connections between them. Say if one targets file overrides target from another or expects some properties from it or somehow else depends on it then there is a connection. In the perfect scenario you'll get something like a star.
In short: you should if it reduces complexity.