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Thank you for taking the time to respond.
I agree that the ability to set TEXT or whatever for each individual target
is very cool!
The dependency scraping is also quite cool but unfortunately I did not
maintain it as it was not an immediate priority for us. Someone getting it
back without breaking things would be cool. I should create an issue for
that.
We have a yum install, we just need to get it into the public repository.
Probably once I finally fix the documentation.
The new multi-directory structure is very flexible.
Basically a makefile gets generated with many directory specific targets
and overrides but it is all transparent to the user (but just a bit slow).
I have met with Help Systems now as well as Liam, I hope we get better
integrated tooling this time around.
Thank you for being on the "bleeding edge" of UTF-8 on IFS.
I have some excellent data returning for both the evfevent files and job
log (with second level help) that can easily be displayed in tooling.
Here is the documentation for the metadata for the project, I have tried to
make it as minimal but flexible as possible.
(See attached file: IBM i Project Metadata (external).docx)
From: "Jeff Berman" <thegonif@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Edmund Reinhardt" <edmund.reinhardt@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 09/29/2021 12:31 AM
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Better Object Builder
Hey Edmund, Well that sounds exciting, and certainly doable. I'm happy that
you've picked it up and are improving it, although I have to confess that
it's emotionally difficult "letting go" of my baby; even though I haven't
Hey Edmund,
Well that sounds exciting, and certainly doable. I'm happy that you've
picked it up and are improving it, although I have to confess that it's
emotionally difficult "letting go" of my baby; even though I haven't worked
on it in a while, I still really like the project and am proud of what I
created.
My assigned goal when developing Bob was to create a build system that
suited S4i (my previous employer), but my secret goal was to open source it
and make it as flexible and configurable as possible so that as many shops
as possible could benefit from it. I know sometimes that made it a little
more complex, but the ability to set compile defaults per object type and
still override them at the object level is a big plus in my book. I came up
with what I think is a nice mechanism for automatically detecting
dependencies like database and display files, and as I recall implemented
it for RPG and C, with the idea that it wouldn't be too difficult to add
more detections and for other languages as well.
It would be really nice if RDi had an easy way to kick off a Bob build. I
wrote those RDi -> Bob integrations using Eclipse's External Tools
mechanism, but it's clunky. My mouse pointer has slightly missed the
dropdown arrow on the External Tools button when trying to select a new
action So Many Times and kicked off some action that I didn't want, which
would be so frustrating to a user.
So about Bob's user base, I really don't know how many people used it. I've
always received a lot of interest about it, but I left S4i for Profound
Logic just after completing Bob, and shortly after that I lost access to
Bob's GitHub repo (it has recently been restored). So I don't know how many
shops used or tried it.
Here's some thoughts on what could have hindered adoption, and what I think
would help adoption, fwiw:
Yum didn't exist on IBM i at the time, so installing and configuring
all the prerequisites was probably difficult for most IBM i people.
Having to manually install and configure the RDi external tools
integration scripts was difficult as well.
There were some bugs that I filed (I believe they all finally got
fixed, but it took a couple years) having to do with compiling
SQLRPGLE and C from UTF-8 IFS files that got in the way of things.
Not sure if this affected anyone but me, but we lost a decent amount
of time due to a bug I hit with RDi. I originally used RDi to convert
all the source code at S4i from physical file members to stream
files. The problem was that one of our developers lived in England,
and some of the code had a pound sign and some sort of broken pipe
symbol that our US keyboard doesn't have. It always worked fine with
green screen, but what RDi did is any time it encountered a character
it didn't understand, it just silently dropped the character (or
maybe it replaced it with a hex FF or something equally odd). We
didn't notice the issue for weeks, maybe months, until we noticed
that the output of one of our programs wasn't right. That kicked off
a huge audit process that resulted in ultimately converting all our
code again using a script I had to write from scratch.
RDi needed some work to really make coding in the IFS or from local
files easy. Like in the beginning, /copy file definitions weren't
resolved and so you couldn't right click on them to view them. There
were other RDi deficiencies, but I don't recall off the top of my
head what they were.
I think the lack of integration between the RDi editor and
the compile listings that are sent from IBM i to PC is something that
could improve. If a module doesn't compile in Bob, you have to
manually navigate to the Logs directory, bring up the compile output,
then manually locate the corresponding source file and find the
relevant line. It would be really cool if compile messages were
integrated into the source somehow, or if it could take you to the
right source file and line with a click.
RPG developers probably don't want to construct a makefile. There
needs to be a graphical tool that abstracts away the complexity.
But... it needs to be super easy to use, and -- dare I say --
intuitive (if that's possible with a makefile).
There's no clear-cut mechanism for creating things like message
files. Sure, you could write a CL called by the message file recipe
that creates a message file and adds all the message descriptions,
but I wonder if it would be helpful if Bob supported some mechanism
for creating message files based on some sort of source code. If you
need to add a message description, you simply edit that source file
and add your text and message severity to the list. But then it gets
a little complicated because you're trying to code these message
descriptions with substitution variables and defining the
substitution variables, all without F4 prompting.
As for using Bob at Profound Logic, I would have loved to use it. Until
recently, the server-side components of Profound UI resided in source
physical files, and there was no change management to speak of (!!!). The
idea of getting all that code into Git finally gained momentum, and became
an actual project to be worked on. I suggested using Bob a few times, but
the project was out of my control and they built a custom Makefile solution
(that actually works really well). So no Bob over here. :-( However, that
being said, maybe I should install what you've improved and use it for my
own code at Profound!
Take care!
Jeff
On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 2:46 PM Edmund Reinhardt <
edmund.reinhardt@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Jeff
I have always been impressed with the power and potential of BOB since
you brought it to my attention.
IBM wants to see development move to the IFS and become more "normal" so
that we can have skills and tooling from the rest of world help the
productivity of IBM i developers.
My vision is to have a dependency-based build on IFS that allows source
files to have descriptive names and to be stored in directory structures
that reflect the organization of the code.
I wanted to get a project definition that was flexible enough to handle
most requirements.
So far I have Liam Allen working with it and I will be presenting it to
Help Systems to get RDi to work with it.
It can easily work with Visual Code or even just with ssh.
I have more partners and applications that I am not liberty to discuss
yet.
But I planned to keep BOB itself Open Source to encourage more people to
use it and even business partners to extend it.
Why do you think that more people did not use the origin BOB?
I don't suppose you have need of this in your current organization?
Inactive hide details for "Jeff Berman" ---09/21/2021 12:20:00 PM---Hi
Edmund, How are you doing?? It's been a long time."Jeff Berman"
---09/21/2021 12:20:00 PM---Hi Edmund, How are you doing?? It's been a
long time.
Hi Edmund, How are you doing?? It's been a long time. Hey, I just noticed
that you have been making a ton of changes to Better Object Builder
lately. I was curious where you're taking it... and, in truth, why you're
developing it.
Hi Edmund,
How are you doing?? It's been a long time.
Hey, I just noticed that you have been making a ton of changes to Better
Object Builder lately. I was curious where you're taking it... and, in
truth, why you're developing it. :-) Do people use it? I've only ever
heard from one person who was playing around with it, and that was a
couple years ago.
Well, take care. Hope you're doing well!
Jeff
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