Effective programming practices for economists. 9. More on teamwork with Redmine

Effective programming practices for economists

9. More on teamwork with Redmine

Hans-Martin von Gaudecker

Department of Economics, Universit¨at Mannheim

Redmine features

I Online repository browser is only one feature . . .

I We’ll look at the issue tracker in the rest of this lecture.

I And a bit at Gantt charts.

I Other features:

Activity List activity in the project – great to see what has happened last.

News Announcements.

Forums Discuss and document posts.

Wiki Useful place for project description, ways forward, etc.. – alternative to such a document among the source files.

Documents Upload documents.

Files Upload files.

Time track. Useful for some third party funded projects.

I Clean up the menu bar by unchecking functionality in Settings → Modules

The issue tracker

I Often called bug tracker, since it was originally designed to document software errors.

I Find an error, report it to the tracker.

I Assign it to somebody, gather more data, find a strategy to fix it.

I Fix it and report it as closed.

I But it really is a shared to-do list.

I Same workflow for new software features (here: model features . . . ).

I Backbone of software development portals like sourceforge.net, bugzilla, etc..

Creating a new issue

Creating a new issue

Creating a new issue

Updating an issue

Updating an issue

Updating an issue

Listing all issues

You could change the status manually . . .

I Click on update again, pick one of . . .

New Nobody is working on it.

In Progress Someone’s taking care of it.

Closed Somebody took care of it, no more relevant.

Rejected It was a false alarm of some kind, does not apply anymore, feature not wanted after all, etc..

. . . or close it with the commit message

Syntax: (fixes|closes) #ID, where ID is the issue identifier (note they are site-wide, so don’t be surprised by high

numbers.)

. . . or close it with the commit message

. . . or close it with the commit message

. . . or close it with the commit message

Recommended workflow

I Always put the next steps you need to take as enhancementes into the issue tracker.

I Paper you need to cite, code you need to write, . . .

I Try to be relatively fine-grained, but you’ll have to find out the optimal content quantity for yourself.

I When you come back to the project, first look through the issues.

I Even after two days.

I Amazing with how many ideas I come up twice . . .

I Try to put any non-trivial bug or strange-looking behaviour into the tracker.

I Especially if you cannot fix it immediately.

I Just writing down the description often helps.

I Useful information later on – many bugs pop up in different disguises later on.

I Use it even when you’re by yourself.

Gantt charts

I Illustrate project schedule – what task you plan to do when.

I Useful when you are in a “hot” phase of a project.

I Clear deadlines are a prerequisite.

I If this is so, use both start/end dates in issue description.

I Gantt chart filled up automatically.

Gantt charts

Gantt charts

Effective Programming ...

2010-10

40 41 42 43

F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S Feature 14: Grade exercises New 60%

Feature 11: RegEx operators and patterns. New 30% Feature 10: Finish slides for Redmine lecture. New 0% Feature 12: RegEx finite state machine. New 0% Feature 8: Read relevant parts of Arbuckle10 New 0% Feature 9: Slides for first example on testing New 0%

Feature 15: Finish slides for testing. New 0% Feature 16: Come up with homework on testing. New 0%

10/18/2010 1/1

News / Discussion

I Use these instead of eMails wherever you can.

I Documentation in a central place is a major advantage.

I You find stuff easier when you need it.

I News for announcements.

I Forums for discussions.

Acknowledgements and revision number

I This course is designed after and borrows a lot from the Software Carpentry course designed by Greg Wilson for scientists and engineers.

I The Software Carpentry course material is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution License, as is this course’s material.

I Last changed revision: 281

I Last changed date: 2010-12-06 18:43:03 +0100 (Mon, 06 Dec 2010)

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