Software Construction: IDEs and SCM

Software Construction #

• Our definition:
  • Software engineering is the discipline concerned with all phases of the software process lifecycle (writing code, testing, coming up with ideas, etc.)
  • Software construction focuses specifically on the building, testing, and technical production of the software product and the tools and techniques used

Techniques and Practices #

• Coding practices (e.g. camelCase in Java vs. snake_case in Python)
• Refactoring
• Collective code ownership and continuous integration
• Minimal shippable/viable product

Tool Categories #

• IDEs
• Source control management
• Bug/issue tracker
• Requirements/feature/backlog tracker
• Communication systems
• Continuous integration systems

Integrated Development Environments #

• An IDE is a programming tool that combines several development features into one unified system
  • Code editor
    • Syntax highlighting
    • Code folding
    • Auto-complete
  • Compiling/running
  • Debugging
  • Testing
• Often contains (or can add) other features
• First IDE developed for BASIC
• First prominent IDE was called Maestro
  • Literally a full system/unit
  • Computer/peripherals/software
• Later languages encouraged (even required) IDEs
• Others include Xcode, Netbeans, JetBrains products, and many, many, many more

Source Control Management #

• SCM enables multiple people to simultaneously work on a single project
• Each person edits their own copy of the files and chooses when to share those changes with the rest of the team
• Temporary or partial edits by one person do not interfere with another person’s work
• Version control also enables one person to use multiple computers to work on a project, so it is valuable even if you are working by yourself
• SCM gives access to historical versions of your project – insurance against computer crashes or data loss
• If you make a mistake, you can roll back to a previous version
• You can reproduce and understand a bug report on a past version of your software
• You can also undo specific edits without losing all the work that was done in the meantime
• Can determine who made a change and when

Centralized SCM #

• Each user gets their own workng copy, but there is just one central repository
• As soon as you commit, it is possible for your colleagues to see your changes
• For others to see your changes you need to commit and they need to update

Distributed SCM #

• Each user gets their own repository and working copy
• After you commit, others have no access to your changes until you push your changes to the central repository
• Distributed version control is more modern, runs faster, is less prone to errors, has more features, and is somewhat more decentralized

Git’s Repositories #

• Your working copy (or working tree) is a folder where your files are
• Create a local repository for a project
  • In that folder, type Git commit: git init
  • Repository in the folder ./.git
  • Start working on your files
• Start with files from some other repository
  • Git term: clone a repository (either local or remote)
  • Remote repo? git clone user@host:/path/to/repository
• git push sends commits to remote
• git pull gets commits from remote
• git merge merges changes from two sources (different repositories, branches, etc.)