[development] Distributed Pairprogramming for Drupal

[Eike Starkmann]

Cameron Eagans wrote:
> I was just looking for something like this! I'll be using this very soon
> on another project of mine =D
> 
Great, is it also an Open Source Project? Would be nice if I can help
you with Saros, so that I can find out how you work with it and what has
to be improved in Saros
> 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.
> -----
Now, that sounds like good scope. Would be great if you give this a try.
Normally people work together with Saros and using Skype or Mumlbe for
voice communication. I would offer you to join this session, to give you
realtime support if something doesn't work out. What do you think about
this?

Greets, Eike

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


-- 
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