Re: From My Wish List

Well, I don't use Visual Studio, so I don't know what it does. I do use Eclipse for Java and PHP, though, and I have used Netbeans a little. One of the things I appreciated about Netbeans was how easy it was to build. Eclipse uses Ant, and you can write a script to do your build. Netbeans uses Ant and creates the build script for you based on meta information. But my Wish List is simply based on my desire to avoid repeatedly doing the same things over and over. Like I said, I can create a BIND.CLLE program in the i Project, but that just is not as nice as being able to say I am building Service program A, I want to export procedures 1, 2, and 3, and you will want to use binding directory Z to hook it all up. By the way, save that information because next time I do this, I am going to want to build that service program the same way. As for the ability to determine what needs to be recompiled when I make a given change, that feature came from my experience with the very old IDE bundled with Borland Turbo C. Eclipse already has features like this for Dynamic Web Projects. Servlets have a lot of moving parts, and configurations can be tedious to hand key, but Eclipse lets you add servlets to the web project, and provide mapping and other configurations so that Eclipse knows how to package everything up for the server. Just would be nice if RDI did that for ILE programs and service programs. This is more of a development requirement than an SCM requirement as it doesn't necessarily need to happen at deploy time (though it could), but it does have to happen regularly during development because I have to do my builds in order to test my application. The SCM has the option of taking my pre-built objects and deploying them, or redoing the build and deploying that.

Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: -----
To: Rational Developer for IBM i / Websphere Development Studio Client for System i & iSeries <wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 03/31/2014 04:00PM
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] From My Wish List

Mark

When we compare IDEs, I think we often compare against Visual Studio - I
don't know how much that IDE does the stuff you want. Maybe it's there.

As I write, stream of consciousness, so don't take me to task until the
end, eh?

Visual Studio used to have a packaging piece. I think it's still there.
If I brought in a reference to a DLL of OCX or some other resource, it
would be included in the list of objects to distribute.

I hope others weigh in here, since I've been long away from building
apps in VS.

Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?

We do have SCM products available - at high cost.

We do have things like Subversion that MIGHT be usable for this. And
that is free. Some in these lists have described their solutions.

OK, now's the time to take potshots at me!! And it's not yet April 1!

HTH
Vern

On 3/31/2014 2:32 PM, Mark Murphy/STAR BASE Consulting Inc. wrote:

I really like the idea of an IDE. It should do all the keeping track of things for me. It should help me with my builds, it should make debugging easier for me, and RDI does a lot of that very nicely. But one place where it falls short is in helping with ILE builds. I shouldn't have to remember what modules are used to build which service programs. I shouldn't even have to manage binder source, the IDE should be able to do that for me. Maybe I am missing something, but this sort of build support should be a minimum level of support. I was talking to a colleague about ILE, and he told me that he hasn't done ILE because it is too hard. To hard in that there are too many moving parts, and no tools that know how to manage them. If I am missing something, please let me know, but I just don't see it in RDi. I was hoping that an I Project would be the ticket, but not really. It lets you write a biding program, but that is not the tool doing the work.

What would be nice is to be able to define a service program in some sort of meta data. A dialog would let me attach modules to the service program, and then tell which procedures were exported. It would also allow me to attach binding directories, and work with the binding directory entries. It would be smart enough to know whether to create or update the service program based on source dates, and whether or not I have added a new module. And I would simply have to tell RDI to build the service program, and it would do it all correctly. That includes recompiling the sources that have changed, and updating or replacing the service program. Generating the appropriate binder source with a static signature. Disallowing moving or removal of exports if at all possible, or making it painful to do so because that would require a rebind of all dependent programs and service programs. It would be nice though if RDi could handle that though as well, automatically.

Now I realize that some of you are pretty sophisticated with ILE objects, and have processes and procedures in place to handle them for you, but don't you think that this is really the job of the IDE? This isn't Notepad, or even SEU.

Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx