What This Book Is About


A development environment is the whole collection of tools that people use to create software, not just a few tools that are specific to a particular programming language. Examples of these tools are version control tools such as CVS, build tools such as make, and bug tracking tools such as Bugzilla. Practical development environments are the environments that are really used by successful projects, and are consequently reused for many different projects. Just as there is a wide range of productivity for different programmers, there is a wide range of productivity for different projects, and that's often due to differences in development environments.

This book is a guidea collection of advice about real development environments. Each of the core chapters considers a different kind of tool: tools for tracking versions of files, build tools, testing tools, bug tracking tools, and tools for creating documentation. Each chapter discusses what you should look for in each kind of tool and what to avoid, and also describes some good ideas, bad ideas, and annoyances for each development activity. Specific instances of each type of tool are described in detail so that you can decide which ones you want to investigate further.

The tools described in this book are mostly intended for small to medium-sized projects, up to around 200 developers. However, the concepts and concerns described in each chapter are equally valid for large projects. One of the key ideas throughout this book is to automate wherever possible, and this becomes even more important as a project grows.

Finally, this book recognizes that some progress is better than none, and encourages you to take even the smallest steps to improve your own development environment.



Practical Development Environments
Practical Development Environments
ISBN: 0596007965
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 150

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