Re: cc65 and "Hello World"

Bill Buckels wrote:
On Apr 16, 2:36 am, u...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (U. v. Bassewitz)
wrote:

Bill Buckels <bbuck...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I got a snapshot that was broken too... how does that happen?

cc65 is actively developed and the snapshot is a daily snapshot of the
development tree. Depending on the state of development, a snapshot may
work great, may be buggy or may not even compile. If you don't like that,
you will have to go for one of the stable versions.


I don't have much patience with things that don't work.

No one has that. But the snapshot is not stable by definition.

Regards

Uz

--
Ullrich von Bassewitz u...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
09:32:41 up 31 days, 19:23, 1 user, load average: 0.28, 0.44, 0.73


Aztec C is actively developed as well Uz but since I am at this point
the only active developer perhaps it is understandable that it should
be stable and easier to configure for newbies.

From my perspective the focus is not so much on changing the compiler
since that works very well and has for decades in some versions for
all the platforms it supports including the C64, Apple II, Z80, Amiga,
and of course MS-DOS. My focus is in providing good clean examples and
link libraries and an out-of-the box working environment and tools to
help include media like sound and graphics into an enriched
application production environment. The documents are complete as well
so I don't have the annoyance of hitting a moving target.

I think my goals are very different from the goals of CC65.

As I take Aztec C through the open source and the necessary rewrite to
C99 etc. I may experience some of these configuration management
problems myself, but my last 30 years in CMS tells me that I probably
won't, so I really still don't understand why a snapshot is used and
why anyone would offer broken software and not expect it to be
criticized.

These are fair questions, statements of experience (I didn't just get
here) and I am coming from a team development environment as a
professional developer, so slings and arrows have no effect. I am not
slamming CC65. Why not use CVS and keep the snapshot to yourself? CVS,
RCS, PVCS, VSS, whatever. But CVS is configurable using password
authentication as well as ssh so there is no reason not to give
everyone access.

Why not do a weekly build and test it properly before releasing it?
Anyways, this is your thing and not mine but as far as best practices
go and my own standing as an ISO 9000 team leader and release
coordinator, the snapshot thing throws me.

When the "development team", especially testers, is distributed
globally, it makes perfect sense to "release" the daily build to
them with full knowledge that something may have "broken" it in
some as yet undiscovered way. That limited release is what allows
the fearless testers to find and report any problems.

It is common for a regular build process to do only limited
regression testing, so such builds are not expected to be robust,
though they are the first vehicle reflecting recent changes.

The problem arises when someone uses a snapshot thinking that it
is a "released" version--which only happens if they don't "read the
label".

Lastly if someone has a choice between something that works and is
easy to use and something that is broken and one has to search the www
to find a working version what would be the logical choice?

The released versions are even easier to find than the snapshots.
You have to go looking for trouble *and not read the label* to find it.

Surely, as an experienced team developer you know this.

-michael

NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."
.

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