DrJava: An Open Source Java IDE Developed by Rice University Students, Study notes of Software Engineering

Download DrJava: An Open Source Java IDE Developed by Rice University Students and more Study notes Software Engineering in PDF only on Docsity! DrJava Development Charles Reis CSE 403 Guest Lecture DrJava • Pedagogic Java IDE • Simple, Interactive • Used at dozens of schools around the world • Freely Available On the Inside • Java with generics (List<String>) • ~400 classes, 50,000 lines of code • Complex (unit tests are critical!) • Two JVMs, plus multithreaded GUI • RMI, JDI, Custom Classloaders • Backward compatibility Benefits of Open Source • Freely available • Tool and Management Support • Incorporate existing code • Educational value • Word of mouth, Credibility? Tools and Management • Sourceforge.net • Free hosting for 80,000 projects • Professional management tools • Track features, bugs, tasks, support • Ant, JUnit, CVS Complications • Choice of License is tricky • GPL: true "free software" • All incorporated/derivative works GPL'd • BSD: more flexible, fewer guarantees • Allows us to use JUnit Extreme Programming • Simple practices that work well together • Pair Programming • Unit Testing • Continuous Refactoring • Incremental Development • On-site Customer Typical Activity • Prioritize bug reports • Write test to exhibit bug • Pair program to fix bug • "Commit" (update, compile, test, commit) • Release Lessons Learned • Unit tests are essential to stability • Work incrementally • XP is effective for high turnover • Much to be gained from open source, even without many external developers Difficulties • Hard to test (and design) GUIs • Hard to enforce good test coverage • Concurrency can be a mess • Java isn't really platform independent... • Tough to keep documentation up to date • Maintenance/support is a full time job Closing Thoughts • Immensely satisfying to work on a widely used product • Open source is a great fit for academia (perhaps elsewhere as well) • XP can work very well for small teams