ACE Development Process

### The ACE Development Process

Last modified .

In order to improve the quality of our software and minimize development effort, we'll try to follow a more structured development process. It is described below.

An important concept to keep in mind is risk. Before you commit any change to ACE+TAO, please consider the effects that it will have. Could it possibly cause a build failure, on any platform? Could it possibly cause different run-time behavior? And so on. If so, it is your responsibility to adequately build and test with the change, in order to verify that it has no unintended effects.

Please keep in mind the cost of committing a mistake. It may take you only a few seconds to fix, but its cost to the group may be much larger. With this large a group, workspace updates and builds are likely to happen at any time. If one break, it can take hours to rebuild it. And each developer that was waiting for a successful build would be blocked for the duration of the broken build, the fix, and the rebuild.

A good development process looks like:

1. Every change to ACE+TAO must have a bug report. Change includes fixes, enhancements, updates, and so on.

2. Create a bug report.

3. Accept the bug report if you are going to implement the change.

4. Implement the change in your workspace(s).

5. Test the change sufficiently to demonstrate that it both does what is intended, and doesn't break anything. The test may be as simple as building and running the ACE tests on one plaform. Or as complicated as rebuilding and test all of ACE and TAO on all platforms that we have.

6. Create an appropriate ChangeLog entry.

7. Commit the change using a ChangeLogTag commit message.

8. Respond to the requestor of the change, if any. Please do this after committing your change.

9. Make sure that the requestor is listed in the THANKS file.

10. Update the bug report to indicate resolution.

11. Monitor the next round of build/tests for problems with your change.

12. Respond immediately to reports of problems with your changes.

A bug should typically follow this life cycle:

Submitter: | Enters problem
Bugmaster: | Assigns
Owner: | Accepts
Owner: | Reproduces problem - if it needs a new test, write it and put it in the regression tests. If it can't be reproduced, set to Resolved/CANT_FIND. If it's a duplicate, set it to Resolved/DUPLICATE. Fix code, commit changes, set to Resolved.
Submitter: | Tests it again; set to Verified (pass) or Reopened (fail)
Owner: | After next release is done, re-test; sets to Closed or Reopened.

At all times, we'll have a build master. (The role may be shared by multiple people.) The build master is responsible for ensuring that the next kits are clean, i.e., it builds and runs cleanly on all platforms.

The build master:

- Reminds people to check build logs. Developers are still responsible for verifying that their changes are clean.

- Freezes the CVS repository when it's decided to no more non-critical changes will be accepted for the next kits. The build master has the final say over when the freeze is implemented. The tendency to implement a freeze sooner than later is intentional, desirable, beneficial, and the right thing to do.

- Verifies that the final round of builds/tests are clean.

- Creates the kits.

- Unfreezes the CVS repository.

- Sends email to appropriate news groups announcing the new kits.

- Passes the mantle on to the next build master.

If another developer interferes with the build master's duties, the build master has the unilateral authority to pass the mantle to the violater. This is intentional, desirable, beneficial, and the right thing to do.