On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Julian Foad <julian.foad_at_wandisco.com> wrote:
> Bolstridge, Andrew wrote:
>> To get new developers, I think the first thing that needs to be done
>> is to make entry easier. That means providing a setup ready-to-debug
>> for people. The initial hurdle on any software project is getting set
>> up (I find) so if you could release a VM image with everything set, or
>> a visual studio project with the code and dependencies in there ready
>> for someone to press 'compile', then you've made a massive headway to
>> helping new devs get going. A pre-built Windows solution would be the
>> ideal - if anyone has one already... let us know :) The documentation
>> could be better (as always :) ), but getting the code running in a
>> debugger is probably documentation enough, especially for a new
>> developer who wants to modify things.
>
> That's a very good idea. I wonder if any of our Windows gurus can come
> up with a practical way to make a ready-to-build package.
Yes, that's probably one of the best investments right now to lower
the bar for new developers (it's also one of the things I mentioned in
the other thread reacting to the vision/roadmap, but that thread seems
to have been discarded ... oh well, no problem ...).
Getting the build up and running on Windows (and getting it to run
from the debugger of Visual C Express 2008) was a huge waste of
time...
Also, don't forget to make it easy to setup an environment to run the
tests (I haven't focused on running the tests on my setup yet, but I
expect that I will lose a lot of time with that again ...).
--
Johan
Received on 2010-04-13 19:32:39 CEST