[development] Distributed Pairprogramming for Drupal

[Robert Douglass]

Eike, this sounds pretty neat. Thanks for brining it to our attention.  
It would also be a good tool for training and consulting, where you  
could save a trip to the customer's office and work with them on code  
directly.

Robert Douglass

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On Oct 15, 2009, at 2:39 PM, Eike Starkmann wrote:

> 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.
>>
> I know that there is nobody like an manager in an office to tell the
> people what tool to use while developing, my question is if there are
> workflows in which Saros might improve the development, for example if
> there are a couple of people how can "meet" within Saros and do pair
> reviews or just working at the module together. At least this is also
> something I would like to find out, if you say "No, we cannot use this
> because we are all working too distributed and in different time  
> zones"
> this is a result for me but I strongly believe that it can be done and
> improve development, but it also depends in the workflows you have.
>> That said, I'm sure such a tool would prove useful to certain  
>> developers
>> if they choose to use it.
>>
> Of course the developer himself has to choose 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.
>>
> Saros is not language dependent, as far as other plugins are following
> the eclipse guidelines. For PHP we have tested PDT, Aptana, Zent and
> PHPeclipse. We have a full overview on this page:
> https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/DPPCompatiblePlugin
> If you would like to give Saros a try and something is missing, please
> let me know and we will try to but it in the next release.
>
> Greets, Eike
>> --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
>>>
>>>
>
>
> -- 
> Eike Starkmann
> This message is part of my Master thesis research. Feel free to  
> contact
> my advisors in case of inappropriate behavior on my side:
> christopher.oezbek at fu-berlin.de and stephan.salinger at fu-berlin.de