[development] Distributed Pairprogramming for Drupal

[Cameron Eagans]

I was just looking for something like this! I'll be using this very soon on
another project of mine =D

As far as Drupal goes, I think that something like this would be
particularly useful for core in a time like...oh,say....now. With code
freeze ~38 hours away, efficiency is key to getting the patches from the
exception list into core. If more than one person is working on a patch, it
really makes sense to use something like this and have everyone looking at
the same code at the same time so that it's not a constant string of upload
to the issue queue, have a minor bug pointed out, reroll with bug fixes. Two
sets of eyes on any of those patches at any one time would be awesome, and I
think it would help get them ready to be committed.
-----
Cameron Eagans
Owner, Black Storms Studios, LLC
http://www.blackstormsstudios.com


On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 10:17 AM, Ken Winters <kwinters at coalmarch.com>wrote:

> I was thinking along the same lines.  Most of the Drupal development that
> I've seen is either:
>
> A) Written by one person, then reviewed / improved asynchronously in the
> issue tracker rather than working at the same time
> B) Written by a team of people for a project in-house, in which case it
> would be the same as basically any other in-house PHP development
>
> I use Eclipse for all of my PHP development (and know some others who do as
> well), but I probably won't ever use something like Saros unless I got a
> tele-working position somewhere.
>
> Some other module / core contributors might find it useful for those tasks,
> but it doesn't seem like a common need.
>
> - Ken Winters
>
>
> On Oct 14, 2009, at 12:08 PM, larry at garfieldtech.com wrote:
>
>  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
>>>
>>
>
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