November 2009

[30-Nov-2009]
Cool DCL tricks:   Did you know that is you have the appropriate privileges, you can issue a CTRL-T against another process? Even another process on another node of the cluster. Also, how to enhance the output of CTRL-T from a command procedure and compiled code. (268 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

[25-Nov-2009]
Logging verses debugging:   Ian Cartwright wrote an interesting piece calling for banning the debugger in the late stages of a development project. He says that "This usually leads to a big upswing in the amount of logging and it's logging we know helps to fix issues". Previously in the same article he implies that a single exception and its stack trace are not enough information to locate the problem. I don't agree with either of these positions. (368 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

[20-Nov-2009]
MMS dependency files:   Recently, I've been asked to retrofit a build dependency system, a source versioning system, and redo the code promotion scripts for a rather large code repository. The obvious choice here is the CMS and MMS tools from the DECset product. I thought I'd start with the dependency stuff, as I can then use it to test the checkout and checkin, rebuilds, and promotion stuff. (242 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)