Team Development using Run Rev

[Malte Brill]

Hi Mark,

 >Who is using RunRev in a group development environment? (reply if  
you are)

Me :)

 >How many developers are on the team?

Up to 5

 >Are the developers in the same office or are the team members spread  
over
 >different regions or countries?

Most of the time same office, somtimes spread across regions

 >How are you handling "master" stack updates to the server?

Very carefully. ;-)

 >How do you handle "code" (.rev files) check-out and check-in?

SVN

 >Bottom line, is RunRev a good tool to use in a production team  
environment?

The file format is not really team friendly given its binary nature.  
It boils down to that every team member is working on one module  
(stack) at the time, which get loaded by a splash screen master stack  
in the deployed version. If cards need to be in the same stack, but  
different people are working on them, we either copy over the cards,  
or ping ourselfs in an IM system. "Do you have xyz.rev in use at the  
moment? Please check it in to SVN that I can do my bits" And in a few  
cases this goes wrong. Given the binary nature of stacks, SVN can not  
merge them, which is a pity. I wrote an XML exporter for stacks, that  
can export a stack to XML and recreate the stack afterwards. However,  
this has some difficulties, as there are some properties, that can not  
be set by script (ID being one). So one needs to design the stacks  
carefully (do not refer to controls by ID) and I gave up on that  
approach.

 >I ask these questions at this time after spending almost 2 years  
using and
 >learning RunRev on my spare time.
 >It is starting to appear to me that it's a viable tool to use to  
develop
 >"off the shelf" software products.

Good tool with up and downsides in team mode. It plays nicer with one  
man show companies.

 >But with that in mind it's important to understand the questions  
above, as
 >one day this may be the tool of choice.

I hope my answers help a bit.

All the best,

Malte