Re: Reasons *not* to open source WebObjects?

On Mar 31, 2005, at 9:27 PM, Anjo Krank wrote:

> Hi Georg,
>
> Am 31.03.2005 um 20:09 schrieb Georg Tuparev:
>
>> I am not so sure about this. I fully agree that some very smart and 
>> useful sources could be found within Wonder, but I neither can 
>> integrate the project with our own sources, nor even compile it with 
>> Xcode.
>
> Really? Are you sure the Ant targets from XCode are not working?

Last time I tried (it was last Jan I believe) they were broken. 
Granted, I did not try very hard.

> As for normal XCode builds: when I started with PW, PBX builds were 
> plain garbage. You couldn't even move a project folder around without 
> very strange error messages. Apple may or not have improved the 
> situation since that time, but I was *so* glad that you can write 
> "makefiles" with ant that I never looked back. Given that they ran 
> about 300% faster was just the icing to the cake.

I have a background process that builds and runs unit test constantly. 
Normally the delay of 30 sec or so is not a big problem and it does not 
slow me down - I can continue typing while the last cycle is 
progressing. And of course developers need to think from time to time 
too, and there is also no chance my coffee will get cold just in few 
seconds :-)

> On top of that I don't see the need to support three sets of build 
> systems (Ant, Eclipse and XCode). The most unreliable one just had to 
> go.

I actually never felt the need to read native Xcode build files - they 
just work for us. Besides, we are doing also a lot of mixed WO/Cocoa 
development and staying close to the smallest denominator is a big 
plus.

Also many things are nowadays achievable by properly utilizing Xcode's 
User Scripts. And because I can use also Ruby scripts, ant is often 
messy alternative...

> Probably your working style fits XCode's edit/build/run/stop repeat 
> cycle, but mine certainly doesn't. And when your project grows, I for 
> my part wouldn't want to miss the refactoring, searching and editing 
> facilities that Eclipse offers.

Searching  and trivial refactoring (e.g. change a method name) - yes. 
But I found out that when refactor manually I tend to produce better 
code. So I do not use the refactoring browser too often - even with 
superior environments like  Smalltalk.

> That the UI is a bit quirky and not very reliable from time to time is 
> annoying but things are still so much better than with XCode that it's 
> simply worth it.

My favorite adrenalin stimulator is that the search is not cycling - 
once you hit the end of the file - that's it!

> Heck, even editing ant scripts and source with TextEdit would have 
> sometimes be better.

Again, in Xcode you do not need to edit built scripts...

> That integration is lacking may be a point, but on the other hand I 
> can't remember you came forward with patches, bug reports or change 
> requests, so I guess that your need to integrate isn't so pressing.

Right. I use many of the qualifiers, and some other sources, but not 
the framework a a whole.

> Which would be normal as a lot stuff will be duplicated in any mature 
> effort to extend WO, so I guess you already have a lot of stuff Wonder 
> offers.

You are correct again. Some of our sources are 6 years old.

>> And please do not think of showing Wonder to a WO developers who have 
>> less then 3 years of WO experience - they will be completely lost and 
>> frustrated.
>
> When in fact creating a ERD2W project would give your app a level of 
> localization your 3+ years developer couldn't do on his own in a year? 
> Oh well.

ERD2W is something we hardly use - not because of choice.

cheers

Georg Tuparev
Tuparev Technologies
Klipper 13
1186 VR Amstelveen
The Netherlands
Mobile: +31-6-55798196