Re: Developer Guide

[Muhammad Alkarouri <malkarouri at yahoo dot co dot uk>]

 --- Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org> wrote: > On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at
> All comments/advice/etc are welcome ;) Of course the ones I don't like
> are quitely forwarded to /dev/null ;)

I am thankful this one didn't go there. I was writing that late at night (you
know the mood implications;)

> 
> You are right -- links are missing and will be added.
> 

I don't remember one at the moment, I will try tomorrow. But there is.

> They are not shared among all programmers of the world, that's for sure.
> No arguments there. I think I will change that. It seems that it is too
> strict. I will keep them as 'suggestions' and insist on consistency
> whatever 'style' a developer uses. I think that would be fair.
> 

Fair and consistent.

> 
> > Sure I must learn doxygen? Isn't it enough I am learning cvs for the moment
> > just to comply with Arabeyes (yes, I get software with it. and yes, I do
> 
> Heh.. well, I could instead be asking everyone to create full fledged
> documents in SGML detailing their code ;) Doxygen is rather simple and
> aside from the configuration file (which is not an issue -- many IDE's
> and helper programs exist to generate it for you), the commenting style
> is simple and not a serious issue.
> 

Now, now. Remember you already had me learning SGML:( It's alright,
nevertheless. Just advice me about such helper program, and may be include it
on your advice there.

> > version control, using subversion now). And would you please mandate
> > reStructured text for Python (I am trying that now). And everybody write
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are you referring to this:
> http://internet.conveyor.com/RESTwiki/moin.cgi/FrontPage

Actually, I meant DocUtils, as in http://docutils.sourceforge.net , but leave
it for now. We don't have many Python projects (anything besides Duali?) and
when there are many, we can standardize.

> > 
> > /*Please forgive me - all of you - for the next ones*/
> > Mandate not using Perl except to support already written programs?
> 
> Heheh.. I wish I would do something like that -- but personal feelings
> about Perl aside, it doesn't relate to the guide ;)
> 


> > No releases are to be made without guranteeing portability, at least
> between
> > Linux (all major distros), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Solaris (for a start).
> 
> Not possible -- for several reasons. Aside from the example of Akka
> (which to my knowledge never worked on Solaris and was only ported to
> FreeBSD in a much earlier version, only works on Linux), there are other
> issues at hand.
> 
> 1. Not everyone has access to all those systems.
> 2. Even if we were to compile at a compiler farm, GUI applications
>    cannot be tested.
> 
> If a program compiles successfully on a given Linux system, it by
> definition should do the same on any given distribution. There are a few
> exceptions (again, only Akka does some special things that require
> fiddling with variations in how distro's structure their console tools
> and keymaps). But that's why you need an INSTALL ;)
> 

Good. I would suggest that everyone can state (in INSTALL or README) on which
platforms does the program work. And advice that everybody should try to make
the software as protable as possible, but no more. This will help the porting.

Sorry, Samy. But I think it will be a huge burden to enforce it. I mean,
porting Katoob to FreeBSD should be made as easy as possible, but assuming that
the coder is not that skillful in FreeBSD I don't think he should stop
releasing the software.

Regards

Muhammad Alkarouri
MSc. Telecommunication and Information Systems
RHCE

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