Configuration/Library Management

While the same techniques of management are valid in both host and workstation environments, the distributed nature of the workstation environment presents difficulties for the centralized control and administration of development resources. This section provides some suggestions as to the ways in which a local area network (LAN) may be used to provide centralized control and administration to a workstation-based application development environment.

In the case of C language applications developed for the Presentation Manager environment, development resources include:

  • Application source modules. An application source module is defined to comprise not only the source code itself, but also the local and external interface include files that accompany the source code (see Application Program Construction).

  • Existing code libraries; these may need to be modified or additional routines generated in order to meet the requirements of the application.

  • Presentation Manager resources such as icons, fonts, bitmaps and dialog definitions.

  • Test data sets or databases.

  • Compilers, link-editors, run-time libraries and other development tools; in an evolving development environment, it is crucial to ensure that all development personnel use the same version and modification level of compiler and linkage editor software, and that programming language runtime libraries are consistent in their version.

    These resources must be created, tested and placed in locations from which they may be accessed easily and concurrently by a number of application developers, while at the same time maintaining adequate control over their access and particularly over any modifications made to individual modules.

    A LAN provides a useful means of enabling access by multiple developers to a common repository of application resources. The ways in which a LAN may be used to address the configuration management issues arising from the PWS development environment are described in the following sections.


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