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Category Archives: Software
MAKE Magazine
I found about MAKE a few months ago but hadn’t really looked into it that much until this week. A lunch conversation about building an underwater ROV using LEGO took me to the site again and boy, do they have good stuff there. Yesterday I subscribed to receive it at home as well as in digital form and I can’t wait for it.
The other magazine I continue subscribed to is Dr. Dobb’s. For many years I thought of it as a must have because of it’s reputation of being a highly regarded magazine and indeed the content is very good. But MAKE for me really takes it one step higher because it’s not just software, it’s real devices, real applications with a use, and things people are building at home for their own purposes and fun. Just so inspiring and wonderful. Awe
Agile Process Template
This is a cool poster illustrating the use of Agile methodologies in software development.
Agile Software Development
I’ve just finished a training on Agile Software Development methodologies. Here are just some of the things I’ve found:
* There is a set of methodologies for software development which are considered to be Agile of which ‘Scrum’ and ‘Extreme Programming’ (XP) are most commonly used.
* Scrum defines an iterative-incremental process for the development at the management level. XP defines best practices at the team level (Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration, Pair-Programming, etc.). Scrum and XP can be used together and most of the times that’s what happens.
* With Scrum there is a new role called ‘Scrum Master’ (not to be confused with Scum Master) which replaces the project manager. He is there to serve the team and help resolve the problems that may arise in a coaching style.
* Emphasis is on the team being happy, willing, self-organized and self-managed. Scrum provides tools to help.
* Task effort estimation is done based on a unit-less measure ‘points’ that is assigned in relation with the other tasks (rather than a time measure like days, etc.)
GCC preprocessing
Today was day of fixing problems with the Linux build of our software. We normally develop and test the software in Solaris but we do nightly builds in Linux as well to maintain compatibility and to early catch portability issues. We receive an e-mail if the build is not successful so we were pretty confident everything was running smooth. The thing is, the machine was powered down! (probably since the last power cut).
So, when we kicked off the Linux build today it was broken. Phil went by the office to help fixing it and, of course, he did. We had exactly the same problem as described here.
To investigate the problem we used the -E and -dD options in the gcc compile command:
-E
This option means nothing is done except preprocessing.
-dD
This option means that instead of the normal output, it does not include the predefined macros, and it outputs both the `#define' directives and the result of preprocessing. Both kinds of output go to the standard output file.
From the Preprocessor-Options section in the GCC manual.