| My Tools for Writing Software at Home |
| Thursday, March 20 2008 |
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In response to my post Do You Write Software at Home Like You Do at Work?, Jeff Hunsaker asks:
"So you'll reveal what tools you leverage to address the above needs...?"
Why yes, Jeff, in fact this was already queued up in my Windows Live Writer, thanks for asking ;-) Here's my toolbox at home, which is pretty close to what I use for work:
- Subversion (via VisualSVN Server) for source code repositories
- TortoiseSVN for checking-in/checking-out code
- Ta-da List for managing tasks and bugs
- NUnit and TestDriven.NET for running tests
- NCover and NCoverExplorer for code coverage
- CruiseControl.NET for builds and continuous integration
The only real difference between home and work is Ta-da List. A couple months ago we (Telligent product team) switched from using Basecamp and Gemini to Unfuddle for task and bug management. Unfuddle is really, really nice and I imagine I'll eventually move my home projects over to it, but for now Ta-da List and my own internal Subversion will do.
And in case you're wondering, yes, I do maintain a central build server with CC.NET and practice continuous integration at home, even though I'm the only one checking-in code and writing tests. Continuously integrating with yourself is, um, a bit freakish to be sure, but nothing pleases me more than seeing those builds get kicked off and viewing the test and coverage results in an automated fashion. Like I said, freakish, but at least I know it :-)
4 comment(s) so far
Nice. Looks almost identical to mine. :) ... the only one I question is CC.NET. It actually works well after I got through the week of setting it up, but I really want to try http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/.
I prefer using something like Mercurial as a local VCS. After working for a while I push to my SVN server from there, purely for backup reasons. Software like Mercurial/Git is just fantastic. If you haven't checked it out, I recommend it. Mercurial has better support for Windows :)
I don't see anything wrong with CI at home. I'm glad you do it, it makes me feel like I'm not the only one :D
What do you use for feature traceability? Something like, "I'm checking this code in against Feature XYZ". Or "This Login Task links to the Secure App Feature".
Jeff - I don't have anything currently that will let me do that. I used to use TFS for that, but...