Team Development using Run Rev

[Steve Checkley]

** reposted because Hotmail didn't add line breaks to my message! **Hello all,Glad this question came up because the company I work for has beenmulling over Rev for development work. No decision has been made yet,but I've had to give this some serious thought as to how we'd go aboutthings if we did.We'd basically have three or four coders working on a project, and wewould have to split out into many stacks so each coder could work on abit each. Some stacks, therefore, would act as interface but would containvery little 'doing' code and other stacks would act as libraries that processbits of data, or provide support for interface elements such as a treeview. In this way, you could break a project down and give each developerspecific tasks and ownership of areas to work on.If there was one stack that contained more UI that any other, one developerwould have to be given responsibility over it and merge the others' efforts.This might mean that the other developers produce a stack with just that oneparticular card in it, which would then reduce the potential for mixing upversions of the stacks. If they're working on just one card but have themain stacks 'in use' at the time, there should be little chance of scriptsnot working when merged.You'd need to set a variable naming convention, to make sure that yourguys don't go mad and create their own globals for the same thing. Localsshould be named conventionally too, so it's easier to read code. The firststack that loads should set your 'world' variables, as I call them... onesthat determine look and feel, location of files and folders etc.Code should be well commented and explained so a second developer canfollow what's been done. In my own projects, I use two commentingstyles... one that explains what the handler does and ones that explain whatI'm doing as I go along. It's usually easier to read Rev's code than otherlanguages but sometimes it can get complicated, especially if abbreviationsor more advanced structures are used.Using groups of controls should make things easier to manage too. So ifyou've got a panel on your main stack and it gets updated, it should justbe a matter of deleting the group and replacing it with another.There are loads of reasons why Rev would work so well as a developmentplatform but it would require careful management of the project to ensure it all comes together. That said, I'm sure any development team is used tosome discipline and my gut feeling is that the speed with which an applicationcould be put together outweighs any additional time spent controlling it.What do others think? Wouldn't it be interesting if the list worked on a groupproject to find out how easy it is to produce something in this way?Cheers,Steve
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