Hey everyone, Since I've been in the Alchemi codebase quite a bit lately, just figured I'd air a few ideas that I had. Just a couple of random thoughts...
There are quite a few files in the CVS that aren't used any more, just taking up space. How about getting rid of them? the old versions will still be in previous versions of the repository.... Along the same lines, there are a lot of Solution Items that don't exist anymore, too. The migration from 1.1 to 2.0 seems to have left a lot of things out of place. AssembyInfo.cs is usually put in a Properties directory by Visual Studio 2005 now... There are a few projects that aren't used any more, like the screen saver executable. Delete? I love the idea of having an Alchemi updater -- hopefully this feature becomes a reality. Documentation - the NDoc project is dead. Everyone is switching over to Microsoft's Sandcastle project. The December CTP was just released. You can also get MSBuild scripts for it to directly incorporate it into the build within Visual Studio. I've done this, it's pretty painless. There is also a Sandcastle Help File Builder on Codeplex that is just like the NDoc frontend. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E82EA71D-DA89-42EE-A715-696E3A4873B2&displaylang=en http://www.codeplex.com/MSBuildSandcastle http://www.codeplex.com/SHFB I think that the MSI build process can be streamlined using MSBuild to include the generated documentation CHM files. Along these lines, the VDPROJ files can be a bit unwieldy, and the setup projects are only really suited for the most simple installations. Microsoft has addressed this problem with WiX (Windows Installer XML), which is awesome. It is completely customizable, and the XML files are diff-friendly. http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/ http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/ I can see the need for the MSI files to automatically run the ExecutorServiceController program before the installation is finished.....but this causes big problems if you want to silently push out an MSI installation to a computer. I use this method of publishing programs to the ~12 nodes in my Alchemi grid and had to make a custom MSI file that didn't try to run this program before the installation was finished. Though it's my personal opinion, I think that the Alchemi assemblies should be signed. Most any other framework has signed assemblies (look at the NUnit and NPlot dlls that are references). Maybe some of this will help :) -Matt P.S. I'd be willing to contribute (with what little time I have), though I don't get along very well with CVS. If Alchemi used Subversion, that's a different story. :) Why use CVS when you have access to Subversion? :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Alchemi-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alchemi-developers
