Best Practices for Software Organization

Question

Background: I'm a windows developer at MegaCorp(tm) and I am getting new hardware soon.

Question: Are there best practices around setting up my developer software installs?

Details: I've got my main IDE (Visual Studio/SQL Management Studio), but there are also tools that I'm testing out, additional tools I can't live without, and future accomodations.

All my code is stored on a remote server in SourceSafe so I don't need to really accommodate for that, but I'll regularly jump into perl/python/php for separate/side tasks.

Answer 1

The only advice I can give you is set up your machine in a way you need it and you can work with and then save an image so that you can return to that state easily.

Answer 2

You should also install the Windows SDK (which usually doesn't come with VS), as there are many useful tools there that can help during development.

If you plan to use .NET, look into Reflector and LINQPad.

If you plan to use ASP.NET or do any web development at all, look into Fiddler and Firebug

Answer 3

Use a VM image, then the project has a VM image that is version controlled.

Tools and OS are recoverable years later.

Your name will shine on asa voice of sanity and configuration management.

Answer 4

Also, don't forget to go and get all your SysInternals goodies. Oh, also remember to export your rss feeds before you upgrade.

Answer 5

Get rid of SourceSafe

Seriously, don't store anything in SourceSafe. There are many other, better Version Management Systems out there. What's wrong with SourceSafe? I strongly urge you to consider reading the following posts:

• http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000660.html
• http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/windev/sourcesafe.html
• http://www.developsense.com/testing/VSSDefects.html

Especially the last one - it goes into lots of detail about the problems with VisualSourceSafe. What should you use instead? Wikipedia has a great comparison of many different Version Management Systems for you to compare. You can look here to find out which ones integrate nicely with Visual Studio.

Answer 6

• vim - VI Improved
• Beyond Compare - best diff tool.
• If you use multiple machines (like one for dev one for test) Synergy is invaluable.
• If you occasionally need to edit icons Paint.NET is pretty good.

As everyone else says kill source safe.

Answer 7

I have to agree regarding SourceSafe, whether or not you have the ability to opt-out of using it or not will obviously affect your ability to addopt a new SCM tool but if you can I highly recommenf the free VisualSVN Server for managing subversion and / or hosting repositories.

If you are prepared to pay for the licence you can also buy the VisualSVN plugin for visual studio, as a student I can't afford that but I have used AnkhSVN which integrates with VS through the source control provider APIs providing a nice native looking interface in VS 08

Other tools I can't live without:

• TestDriven.NET
• DocProject for easy generation of MSDN-style code documentation. I believe it uses sandcastle to do the real work but sandcastle itself is difficult to use and this is the most sane UI over it I've seen and managed to get working without massive amounts of work.
• Paint.NET for graphics work
• TortoiseSVN is another really good SVN client that I use for doing things like merging to trunk because I am more familiar with the interface and I think it's nicer than AnkhSVN in some areas