Re: iSeries Projects and (beginning) XP status report

Buck,

You can solve the library issue by modifying the build CL. I have not played with the projects perspective in a little while but did find that things worked better when I told wdsc to create a generic build CL which I later modified to my situation. In the couple cases I followed threw to finish it did work fairly well, but then again I do not have any version control system in place(can't convince the powers that be we should have one, yet!!).

Lately, I have been thinking about trying out projects again as I look to find a better development / organization model for code and objects. Historically our shop has used the QRPGLESRC, QCLSRC method of grouping by source types within a given library. This is nice but can at times make finding all the pieces of a process more cumbersome, I still think that is better than a single source file for an entire library that contains many programs / processes. More recently I have been contemplating a single file for all sources related to a given process / program, for example LIBRARY/PROJECT with all source members together. In my minds eye this would keep things organized and together allowing for easier modification especially if build CLs are used(which I have also been thinking about using as I get more modular in my design). I am sure this may ruffle some of my coworkers thought processes but I think it may be a good direction to go at least for modular programs as it more closely aligns to the methods employed by other languages. I am very interested in other developers opinions in this area, what are others doing / recommending? Thanks in advance for any responses.

Buck wrote:

Wanted to let the list know how it's going. I'm trying to get some XP (eXtreme Programming) techniques going in my RPG and CL programming and I thought I'd give iSeries Projects a try, mainly for the SVN integration. I figured I'd keep many versions of the code as I went along.

In general, I don't think iSeries Projects is a particularly good fit for XP. Not because there's something wrong with iSeries Projects, just that it's probably not the right tool for the job.

The Subversion integration is okay, but mostly manual. That is, I don't get a new rev every time I open a member for editing. And by the way, once you've opened a member for editing under iSP, don't open it later with RSE or SEU. Things get confused quickly, and the repository thinks it's the member of record which will result in the loss of changes.

There's a bug trying to look at version history. If you click on a member (say at version 14) and right click, team, history you see the history. Click on a different member (say at version 12) and it doesn't show the history for that member. You have to do it again.

Compilation is a pain. Again, iSP wasn't intended for a rapid edit, compile, test cycle so I can hardly blame WDSC for my misuse of it. I found it unpleasantly easy to compile the wrong member (right click, remote, compile, compile.)

When ready to integrate, iSeries Projects deploys only to a single 'test' library. Not fun when one has a production deployment that goes into multiple libraries.

All things considered, I think I'll be doing the next iteration with RSE and skipping Subversion. I didn't get enough value out of the experiment to stay with it for a project that is strictly RPG and CL. If the whole shop used WDSC and Subversion, I might change my opinion, but as a solo effort, it was more work than it was worth to me.
--buck