Joel praises the Windows Branching and Quality gate model

On By doubtrIn Microsoft, Software - TechnicalLeave a comment

Joel writes:

Of all the things broken at Microsoft, the way they use source control on the Windows team is not one of them.

…

When you’re working with source control on a huge team, the best way to organize things is to create branches and sub-branches that correspond to your individual feature teams, down to a high level of granularity. If your tools support it, you can even have private branches for every developer. So they can check in as often as they want, only merging up when they feel that their code is stable. Your QA department owns the “junction points” above each merge. That is, as soon as a developer merges their private branch with their team branch, QA gets to look at it and they only merge it up if it meets their quality bar.

 

So where does the branching model have issues in Windows?

First, we haven’t gone to a branch(s) per developer so there are semi redundant tools for managing checked in code and tools for managing potential changes not checked in. This causes friction in building and testing such changes. Also a branch implies a path for a change to get some main place or product, and managing the path can be annoying. You get emails of, “The old path is getting shut down, migrate your code to the new path”. At times there is no place to do your work and check it in. Another set of problems come via the quality gates on RIs. Constainsts around how many branches can be built a night and the velocity of change to the overall code base resulting in a need to meet the quality gates quickly and in a automated way. You see, if you take to long to RI, your test results may not be valid anymore becuase the OS has changed enough from other teams.

A lot of this system came as a result of the famed Longhorn Reset and thier was growing pains in such a huge change, so it’ll be intresting to see what system we come up for the next release.

New Ghost in the Shell

On By doubtrIn AnimeLeave a comment

I was poking around on soapbox and noticed that Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Solid State Society is coming out. This is a movie based on the GITS SAC line of stories.

Video: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Solid State Society

Raymond's Halloween Costume

On By doubtrIn JournalLeave a comment

In previous years, I’m told that Raymond went for Halloween as an Interoffice Envelope and a Nobel Prize, and we were thinking at dinner last Saturday, what would be a good costume for him this year? On the paper theme we reached a set of ideas around hazard warning signs.  The favorites (of mine) were the Danger: Contents under High Pressure and the the standard diamond. The problem is that it wasn’t quite enough to be worthy of a Raymond costume. The Nobel Award was good because of the time he took to forge all the signatures. My last idea which I think would also be good is to be a signature gatherer. You could have a bunch of proposals for every possible sillyness, and try to convince people to sign them. Alas I don’t think he was too interested in that one either.

Night at the Symphony

On By doubtrIn JournalLeave a comment

So last night I went to the Seattle Symphony: Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3. We were all somewhat concerned about the World Premiere piece, Black Swan, but it turned out quite nice. The second piece required what appear to be super human dexterity on the piano, but often then more complicated playing didn’t seem to be the best parts of the piece for me, it was however impressive to watch. I found that the late hour and the Beethoven conspired to try to put me to sleep. I definitely closed my eyes but I don’t think I actually feel asleep. The violist who shared a music sheet with first violist of the right group had a direct line of site to my seat and appeared to be staring at me the entire time. Of course he was just following his music, but it was motivating for trying to stay awake. There was another violin player who had an amazingly long beard which appears to not be very common. Another Asian violin player appeared to be seizuring, but I guess he was just really into it.

We had dinner before the concert and desert afterwards at  Earth and Ocean. I had the Hanger Steak with some blue cheese, but probably would have done juts fine with a salad. My steak came with four types of imported salts. It was very tasty. I also had some seven hills wine shared with Mark and Hillary. This was the first time I can remember doing Earth and Ocean for a main meal that wasn’t 25 for 25. For desert I had trouble choosing between an apple dish, the petit fours and the sherbets. In the end I went for the sherbets but they were not as wild as they used to be; chocolate and peanut butter, mixed berry and a third I can’t remember.

Unfortunately since I was at the Symphony I missed Ben’s Birthday party which is where Pam and Simeon spent the evening. Earlier in the day I had brunch with Mike at the Brown Bag Cafe. All and all, way too much food during on Saturday.

New York Times Reader

On By doubtrIn Intresting, Microsoft, Tech1 Comment

The New York Times has developed a pretty cool windows client using the avalon Windows Presentation Framework in .Net Framework 3.0. The pp downloads the articles so that you can browse the news paper offline, it re-flows the content to intelligently display articles based on the size of the windows, has great search features, keeps read state, lets you annotate the articles save it off, etc. It’s a pretty powerful demonstration of what new windows applications can be like.  Right now it uses the free NyTimes registration. Check it out!

 

 

 

Inline Search for IE (including 7 on Vista)

On By doubtrIn Intresting, Software - TechnicalLeave a comment

Dare was kind enough to point out that there is a nice non-modal inline search for IE, available right now. I haven’t told so many people to install a piece of software as a must have for a long time.

What's going on in the world

On By doubtrIn Current Events, PoliticalLeave a comment
  • Seymour Hersh documents the battle in between Bush’d administration and the military branches over Iran policy.
  • Political slogans were once again turned in poor law, this time proving your citizenship for Medicaid.
  • Hadman proves the point that “conservative judges” are more idoligical then constitutional. It’s feels good to know that we haven’t lost the american system of government yet. Yes it’s easier to bypass the law when we don’t like its consequences and possibities, but that is not the America most of us cherish so much. 

Happy July 4th!

Recent Podcasts

On By doubtrIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Some IT Conversations I’ve recently listened to:

  • Kevin Slavin – Big Games
    • Using small devices and back-end server, they set up games that span real world cities. Clues to what PuzzleSafari could morph into?
  • Steven Berlin Johnson – Serious Games
    • The author of “Everything Bad is Good for You” focuses into video games, and talks a bit about Lost.
  • Bjorn Mellin – Genetically Modified Crops
    • Argentina is #2 in the world in GM crops. It is VERY popular down there.
  • Tim O’Reilly – The O’Reilly Radar
    • Trends and Themes that O’Reilly is looking at. I kept thinking while listing to it that the GPL has morphed into a way to punish software distributors while favoring Web services and properties. Since the source distribution responsibility doesn’t touch them. It becomes very obvious why the proposed new GPL is so focused on such services.

Vista Beta 2 Bugs

On By doubtrIn Microsoft, Software - TechnicalLeave a comment
  • Nero 6 crashes on app startup
  • Burn to iso type cd prompts me to insert disk
  • Doesn’t auto refresh after cd or dvd burn so that the explorer looks empty.