Deployment: Some tricks of the trade

[Guy1954]

Hi Xbliters,

Distributing a revision means expanding an application's feature set. The intention is good as long as the new features do not introduce regressions. In software development, good enough is rarely good enough.

To avoid to shoot myself in the foot by drawing my gun too hastily, I perform a last inspection of the released source with a text comparator: WinMerge.

What is WinMerge?
"WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle." (website: http://winmerge.org)

2 usages of WinMerge:

1.Visual check before releasing an application.

I compare a new release with the previous one and it gives me a fresh look on my code changes.
I might even add comment lines for additional information.


2.Change "sand-boxing"

I clone the project to change in a sand-box.
I code my corrections/evolutions.
I compare the original program and my work in progress.

When I modify the application's XBLite source (new.x),
I merge the changes by WinMerging old.x (left) vs new.x (right).


I am doing this for the past 30 years, and it is a simple habbit with a huge payload.

Would you have also some tricks of the trade to share here?
Any trick that I could add to my grab bag of stock answers?
Or tickle our imagination?

Bye! Guy

[Tim H]

I am retired.  For the last ten years of my programming career, I used difference analyzers before releasing a new version.  On Windows, this was always WinDiff.  I can't remember what I used on Linux or other OSs in years past. 

When the source code for the release candidate is in final form, it is time to use WinDiff, WinMerge, or something similar.

While developing, I have made a small text file listing each change since the previous release and the expected effects.

The result from WinDiff are compared against this accumulated list of changes.

Are the changes in the source code fully reflected in the list of changes?

Is each item in the list of changes fully reflected in the source code changes?

Usually, this is a tedious and boring exercise.

Sometimes, I catch a programming error.

Sometimes, I realize an item has been left off the list of changes.

The list of changes is now ready to be used for preparing the Release Notes.

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From: Guy1954 <guy....@gmail.com>
To: xblite <xbl...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, December 2, 2016 9:46 AM
Subject: [xblite] Deployment: Some tricks of the trade

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[Ruben Baumann]

1. Never test your own code.  Have another person do it that doesn't have an interest in it.  They'll find more wrong than  you will.

2.  If possible, eat your own dog food.

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[Guy1954]

Hi Rynt,

RE "Eat your own dog food.", so very true! You are not barking at the wrong tree!

That's why I have my pet application (viXen), which allows me to experiment in so many directions.
Any Xbliter ought to have a pet application in XBLite, in the spirit of "drinking you own champagne".

Thanks for your tips, but the old dog that I am is hungry for more...

Bye! Guy

[Guy1954]

Hi TimH.

For how long have you been coding in XBLite?
What are you using XBLite for?

Since I no longer have a personal website, I am planning to post its contents in D.'s XBLite Forum.
Would be good if you shared some programming wishdom...

Bye! Guy

[Tim H]

Guy,

I haven't done anything with it yet.

I have some projects in Visual Basic I am considering to bring over to XBLite.

I used to write commercial applications and also software used by corporations to do data migration projects.  ETL - Extract, Transfer, Load.  Perhaps from text files, sometimes between Oracle and SQL Server, sometimes involving Microsoft Access and/or Excel.

Most of my work was in accounting and finance.

The most recent project was an ETL for clients who wanted to keep two large accounting systems and move accounting records between them.  The one before that was Windows software that talked with a handheld device via infrared and USB.  I also made the USB drivers for it.  We had drivers for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

For the bulk of my work, I am concerned with robust text manipulation.  Every project except the handheld interface project involved megabytes to gigabytes of data manipulation.  ODBC was important. 

I have my own database driver.  The data is kept in HTML files. The driver will be the first thing I try to port to XBLite.

I don't code games and rarely code graphics.  It's all about forms, and reports, and data data data, all the time data!  Where is the data?

I love Linux and will be converting Windows projects to Linux.  I hope to be completely free of Windows someday.

Thanks for asking.

I think this might be my first post to the list.  I've been year for at least a year.

Best,

Tim Henderson

Florida, USA

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From: Guy1954 <guy....@gmail.com>
To: xblite <xbl...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Monday, December 5, 2016 11:19 AM
Subject: [xblite] Re: Deployment: Some tricks of the trade

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[Guy1954]

Hi Tim,

I'm also a former Visual Basic 6 developper, and I have included an Import feature from VB6 in viXen. If you start using viXen, and have some trouble to import VB6 forms, I can enhance viXen to your needs. Also, you might be interested in using viXen as I implemented an XBasic generator. Since you are planning to use Linux, you have 2 possiblities:
1.Linux/Wine
2.XBasic for Linux

Also, I used XBLite on really huge files to feed EXCEL sheet. I had to revert to Java because I could not code the file filters in XBLite. I probably gave up too early, since I was in a rush to get things done overnight for yesterday, but don't forget to try on huge files before you decide it is a good to go.

Kindly keep us posted!
Just like "A penny saved is a penny earned!"..."A challenge solved is a stock solution for the other XBLite Guy!"

Bye! Guy

[David Silverwood]

Hi Tim

I started off with Quickbasic 4.5 and then VB6! The old Dos6.2, win 3.1, win95 and Win98 days when Windows was still fun and challenging! (Lol, just gave my age away)

I'm a Linux user (Have been for the past 10 years) and I can vouch for the fact that xblite works brilliantly in wine. You can install, use Xsed, compile etc just as if you are in a windows environment. I use Winmerge in Linux and to date have not had any issues with it. I also do a lot of database programming and work in a financial environment.

I have recently used Linux Xbasic to connect to a sqlite3 database and I actually had less issues than I had with Windows. (Needless to say some of the issues were due to my own ignorance or stupidity, whichever way you care to look at it, .) Guy cleverly managed to fix the .dec file for sqlite3 (Which I must thank you for, Guy!) and posted a working model (Which I can also vouch for, already tested in xblite and xbasic for Linux). The files are posted in the xblite forum.

The only issue I still have is getting Vixen to work properly in Wine. Its possibly my own stupidity but it seems to freeze. I've had some success with it when emulating a desktop in Wine so it may be graphical by nature, not sure.

Vixen has helped me port some of my old VB6 files to Xblite and to Xbasic for Linux with huge success. (I'm currently using Vixen inside a virtualbox with Win7 as OS.)

Guy has put a lot of effort into both Vixen and Xblite and although I have not been able to 'test' all of the enhancements yet it is good to know that they are available. It is also fitting that we thank Guy for all his hard work. It is much appreciated!

Regards

David (Watchman) Silverwood

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[Guy1954]

Hi David.

Happy to oblige, old Xbliter! (...and don't you second-guess "Guy1954").

Here is my 2017 objective: XBLite compiling applications running within the Unicode Windows GUI.

Would be great if you start a discution thread at the XBLite Forum: I am definitely interested in using SQLite for a website for example. But my challenge is to make XBLite support the Wondows implementation of Unicode. I am planning to use the Win32 APIs instead of assembler.

My proof of concept is XSEd, which I am porting to Unicode.

With Unicode support, we can envision Web development in a new and improved so-called "WAX environment".

Bye! Guy

PS. Just kid'n'! WAX is just a child of my vivid imagination. Or not!
WAX = Windows, Apache, Xblite! Beware WAMP, here come XBLite on SQLite!