jjlong - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 9:05 AM:
I'm fairly new to Aras development and am looking to tap the wisdom of the veterans so I don't reinvent the wheel.
Can anybody offer development best practices for Aras development in a team setting? I'm looking for things like suggested naming conventions, source code control, package export/import tips, multi-developer check in / check out practices, etc. What lessons have you learned the hard way and how did you improve your practices as a result? What practices speed your development?
chado - Thursday, September 1, 2011 10:12 PM:
How, indeed. I have asked this question before here without a single reply.
It is extremely tricky, for obvious reasons. One thing to be aware of that has caused us severe grief is the fact that the import/export tools do not account for "negative differences". Meaning, if we remove something on our dev server that exists on prod and export the ItemType in question, that removal does not necesasrily carry over to the destination server on import. So if you have a method binding that is deployed once and the later removed on dev server, you need to write scripts to explicitly delete that same binding when you patch to production.
Aras' tools basically only do "adds" and "updates" on import.. deletions/subtractions need to be handled manually. Perhaps rightfully so.. I don't know.
We are trying to stabilize a procedure where we use SVN on Aras schema exports. We try to have individual devs stick to working on particular "modules" alone to avoid collisions. Personally, I leave methods and other items locked until I have them stabilized and checked into our svn.
We are getting there, but it really sucks when you put a ton of effort into a patch, only to have SME's/testers find new errors introduced by patch build problems :)
Another thing to consider: be very careful about the design and use of Aras "packages". The consultant firm that developed our first few releases before I started stuffed everything into one package, which turns out to be a terribly ill-advised decision.
I would love for a mod to show up in this thread and point out what WE are instead doing wrong.