[development] Distributed Pairprogramming for Drupal

[larry at garfieldtech.com]

Just one point to clarify, there is no "Drupal Team" that could decide 
en masse to use a tool like this.  Drupal is so distributed that we all 
have our own development workflows using a variety of tools, often in 
our basements rather than our offices (although there, too).  So "Could 
use and Drupal benefit" is really the wrong question to ask.

That said, I'm sure such a tool would prove useful to certain developers 
if they choose to use it.

Is it language-dependent?  Vis, most Eclipse devs work on Java, not PHP, 
so I am always wary of tools that may end up being centric to one 
particular language's development idiosyncrasies.

--Larry Garfield

Eike Starkmann wrote:
> Dear Drupal Team,
> 
> My name is Eike Starkmann and I'm working working as part of the Saros 
> Team at the Freie University in Berlin.
> 
> Saros is an Eclipse plugin for collaborative text editing and 
> distributed pair programming, i.e. it allows two or more developers to 
> work together in real-time on the same files. It is similar to Gobby, 
> SubEthaEdit or Google Docs but focuses on programming in Eclipse.
> 
> It is my master thesis to figure out whether Saros is useful when 
> developing Free/Open Source Software. I already was in contact with  to 
> other projects, for example Typo3 and got some good response.
> 
> In my opinion Drupal can benefit from Saros because I think it brings 
> many advantages to Open Source Software development:
> 
> * Distributed Pair Programming is like a live peer review. This should 
> help with finding good design, get rid of bugs, increase readability, etc.
> 
> * Transferring knowledge should be easier to do when more than one 
> person look at and work with the same code. This should also help to 
> give new developers an introduction to the code.
> 
> * In contrast to screen sharing, Saros only shares your actions inside 
> of Eclipse with regards to the project you are both working on (think 
> privacy) and you are still independent to explore the project on your own.
> 
> Saros can be useful in the following contexts:
> 
> * Working on complicated problems in the code
> * Performing code reviews
> * Debugging
> * Code presentation
> * Code sprints
> * Introducing new developers to the project
> * ...
> 
> What do you think? Could you and Drupal benefit from doing pair 
> programming using Saros?
> 
> If you are interested in Saros but still curious about how it works 
> please visit our website or feel free to contact me.
> 
> I hope you will find Saros useful and give me feedback.
> 
> Kind regards, Eike Starkmann
> 
> Website: https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/DPP
> Update Site: http://dpp.sf.net/update
> Saros @ SF: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dpp/
> Programming Languages Supported by Saros : 
> https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/DPPCompatiblePlugin
> 
>