Codenamed Products and Visual Studio

Question

Are there any practices regarding using codenames of products in Visual Studio projects and solutions? In that typically, namespaces, assembly names, binary outputs, et al need to be renamed once a product name is chosen: is there any way to deal with this?

Answer 1

In one place I worked we'd choose an unrelated and inoffensive, and typically systematic name for any given project.. Jupiter, Orca, Feynman whatever... and stick with that namespace forevermore.

Because as you've seen what the marketing/client/board chooses to call a product (hell, even what version number they choose) is so rarely going to be known at the start let alone the same by the end, that it's just so much easier for everyone to be able to have a fixed internal reference they don't have to refactor later.

I can't stress how important it is that the name is simple, one word and inoffensive though.

Answer 2

This will partly depend on the type of product. If it's a client library - or anything that will require users to see the names - then clearly the names matter. I don't think it really matters otherwise. Bear in mind that different versions of the product may have new codenames (e.g. Everett, Whidbey, Orcas for Visual Studio) - you don't want to have to rename the code each time you start a new version!