Forks, Feuds, and Friends – The Unix Family Version Tree

It’s Friday… so I dug up one of my all-time favorite web gems: The Unix Family Version Tree. Ever wonder when Unix started? Or the relationship between BSD and System V? Or how closely related Mac OSX is (or is not!) to Linux? Click the chart to see the full-size version.

Here are some notable shortcuts: SystemV, Linux, BSD, HPUX, Solaris, MacOSX, GNU/Hurd, Plan 9, Atari Unix, iPhone OS, Windows OS.

Even for those new to Unix (out on the leaves of the tree!), this time-line has a wealth of interesting information showing the history and relationships of most unix varietals. It will also help explain the usability challenges of switching between divergent OS’ from navigating file-systems to loading drivers to managing hardware.

While this reference isn’t exactly about AccuRev or its software development process automation per-se, it’s a great example of how divergent software can grow over time and how tracking changes between active mainline and previous releases becomes really tricky — unless you have good tools (like AccuRev!).

/happy friday/ – dave

foo. bar. baz. ???

Thank goodness it’s Friday.

This week I was creating a diagram and needed a few placeholder words. foo. bar. baz. The usual suspects. But I found myself needing a few more. I’ve used baq before as a 4th but wasn’t sure how ‘formal’ it was. Oddly enough, I can’t find a current reference to it! Egads. But I digress.

Wikipedia has a nice writeup of meta-syntactic variables and mashes some old-skool verbiage into a suggested “formal” list. Here is their list:

Wikipedia: A “standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples” is: foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.

From a distance, this list looks pretty interesting. Though, ‘foo’ probably works better than ‘thud’ in a formal presentation. In my opinion, this list breaks down. Why? Because only ‘fred’ can be typed with one hand (QWERTY) and the words are too terse! I may be biased as a left-hander, but ‘fred’ is the only word that can be typed by either hand in isolation! Otherwise, they are either too obtuse for presentation or frustratingly difficult to smoothly type… regardless of their pristine historical roots. Seriously, try typing “xyzzy”. Ugh. Would you label a diagram element as ‘plugh’? Useless, perhaps. Room for improvement? Indeed!

Do you have any suggestions for what could be used after ‘baz’?

/happy naming/ – dave

Top 10 Ways AccuRev Makes You Green

Gartner claims that Green IT is a top strategic technology for 2008.  We thought you’d be interested in how AccuRev software is Green, even today.  

The Top 10 Ways AccuRev makes you Green

10. Cutting branches harms your source trees. Go green, use AccuRev streams

9. With AccuReplica, less travel is required

8. AccuRev runs on smaller servers (using less power)

7. AccuRev 4.6 is made from over 80% recycled AccuRev 4.5 code

6. There are no transportation costs for shipping AccuRev

5. A small amount of yellow can easily be added to the StreamBrowser

4. Less CO2 emitted by fewer required AccuRev administrators

3. With XP/Agile development using AccuRev, two developers share a PC

2. With on-time releases, there is more time to line-dry the wash

1. Developer productivity goes up, computers turn off earlier

Editor Learning Curves

The importance of software tools can never be understated. For a developer, choosing the right text editor is a very important choice. Do you use notepad? pico? ed? nano? emacs? vim?

If you’re looking to swap editors or looking for an upgrade, maybe this picture can help. It’s one of my favorites.

<click image to enlarge>

If these don’t suit your need, maybe you should try editing source code with butterflies.

<click image to enlarge>

/happy editing/ – dave

A Few Good AccuRevvers

James from AccuRev: You want answers?

Tom the CC User: I think I’m entitled to them.

James from AccuRev: You want answers?!

Tom the CC User: I want the truth.

James from AccuRev: You can’t handle the truth! Tom, we live in a world that has complex software. And that software is going to be coded by men with computers. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Tom with your CC? We at AccuRev have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for CVS and you curse SVN. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know: That the AccuRev SCM tool, while special and unique, probably saved jobs. And AccuRev’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves jobs. You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at tradeshows, you want us for your source code. You need us for your source code. AccuRev uses words like Keep, Promote, Update…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent managing source code. You use ‘em as a punchline. We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to a man who drinks coffee and programs under the blanket of the code management we provide, then questions the manner in which we provide it. We’d prefer you just send us a P.O. and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up an IDE and start programming. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to.

James from AccuRev: Did you order something besides AccuRev?

Tom the CC User: I did the job that the IBM bigot made me do.

James from AccuRev: Did you order the CC?

Tom the CC User: You’re damn right I did!!!

James from AccuRev: All you did was weaken a company today, Tom. That’s all you did. You put software projects in danger. Sweet dreams, son.

scm h00dlums

This week AccuRev had a booth at the Real-Time & Embedded Computing Conference (RTECC) in Santa Clara. The exhibition floor was crammed with circuitry, chips, resistors, PC boards, cables, and apparently the ‘cool’ thing was to have an RJ-45 or USB port directly mounted. The conference was a success as we met current customers, old friends, and folks new to AccuRev, especially firmware developers, who were intrigued with how streams could separate out levels of testing.

Now on to the humor…. Later that day I was leaving a parking lot and spotted a van with a unique marking on the side that was too good to be true. At first, from a distance, I was convinced that the van was the target of high-tech hoodlums from silicon valley. Turned out to be some large stickers.

But I can’t resist… If this were spray paint, the van would definitely have been TAGged!

/happy friday/ – dave

Force Testing

There are a variety of testing methods: White Box. TDD. Mocks. Unit. Stress. Functional. Taste. Flight. Load. and more…

It’s Friday… Here’s my favorite test courtesy of Boeing… check out the 777 Wing Force Test.

/happy testing/ – dave

ASCII 4 AccuRev

I recently saw some folks sending around proposed stream structures via email. These hand-crafted works of art clearly took an incredible amount of time in order to line up all the pipes and dashes to represent the connecting lines. Adding a new stream means re-working all the connecting lines… what a pain!

An alternate and simpler solution is to create a temporary depot and all the streams/snapshots/workspaces… then take a screenshot and send the stream hierarchy as an image. This is better because adding new streams will dynamically update the position of all streams. Though, there are times when simply pounding out a quick ASCII version is desired…

Taking a page from Fortran/Python formatting and reminiscing about my nethack days… here’s an example technique for modeling AccuRev with ASCII.

The Language:

        depot --name
       stream -~name
     snapshot -$name
    workspace ->user
    timebasis -@name
       hidden -*name
  default grp -^name

An Example:

    --depot-~test-~int-~fix1234->dthomas
                      -~featureX->dpoole
                                ->bdemaria
                      -@featureY->dleblanc
                      -$nightly_20070507
                  -$rc_20070508-^maint-~dthomas
                                      -$rc_20070508.01
                                      -$rc_20070508.02
              -$rel_20070509
              -$rel_20070618

Ok, I’m just playing around. It’s Friday!

/happy hacking/ – dave