Rust library development workflow - workflow

When developing a library in Rust (+ Cargo), how do I achieve the fast recompile/test cycle?
When developing an app, it's easy, I:
Make changes in the code
Switch to the terminal and run cargo run
See the compiler feedback
But now I want to extract parts of my app as a library and publish it on GitHub.
I would like to continue developing my app, but now with this library as a dependency. I'm going to develop both the library and the app in parallel.
How do I get same quick feedback now?
Both the library and the app will be developed on the same machine, I would like to make changes to the library, update the app correspondingly and see the compiler feedback.
I'm guessing I could use my library as a dependency in Cargo.toml and run cargo update each time I want to update my app's dependencies, but this will be somewhat slow because it will have to download the code from github each time and recompile all dependencies.

You can use this somewhat undocumented feature of cargo. Add the following line to ~/.cargo/config file (or /path/to/your/binary/project/.cargo/config to limit the effect to your binary project):
paths = ["/path/to/your/library"]
From now on every cargo package (or those under /path/to/your/binary/project root) which depends on your library will use /path/to/your/library as the source code for it regardless of what is specified in this package manifest, so you can keep Git repo URL in your program manifest. Hopefully this feature will be documented in future.
Update
This is now documented in the Cargo guide.

Related

I could link the package with my project using 'npm-link'. But, Some how in the browser, the changes are not reflecting properly

I have a component library [design-system]. I want to use that library in another project.
I did run npm-link in 'design-system' and npm link design-system in the project.
First, the link didn't work, after I deleted package-lock.json and did npm i. I could see, my component refers to the design system's dist index path. Even If I change anything in the design system and build it. It is reflecting immediately in the project. I can see the design-system's code in VS Code IDE.
But, when we run the program, the changes are not reflecting in the UI.
For example,
I commented on the console.log code in design-system
even I can see this code in the package by clicking 'Go to Definition'. But in the browser, the code is not updated.
I cleared 'Application cache' and tried again. I don't know what I am missing. Please help me with this.
Thanks!
you need to run the build in watch mode for your design-system library. Now for each change, the library will build and the bundle will update hence you will see the changes reflecting.
Alternatively, for development purposes, you can do something like
"design-system": "file:../relative-path-from-pkg-json"
instead of npm-link. still, if you can target the non-build version of your library. it may or may-not work deponding on your build tooling.
Or you can get real fancy and try Nx Monorepo approach which will take care of everything about tooling. while you can focus on your development.

Finding the latest build version of Library

I think I am missing something, but I want to add library from github to Android, I don't see anywhere on the Github page the latest built version of the library so I can include it in my gradle file. I have to go to maven or jetpack manually and search for it. Is there a shortcut? Am I missing something?
Thanks
There is a Lint check which allow Android Studio to query the latest versions available.
First you will have to activate this Lint Check
Go to Settings, then Editor > Inspections and search for Newer Library Version Available and check it.
Then run a code Analyze with Analyze > Run Inspection by Name... and type newer and select Newer Library Version Available
Run the inspection on the wanted scope (module only, full project, etc...)
Then you will see which library has a new version available.
PS
As stated by the Lint description of this feature, you should not let this check activated because it may slow your code analysis (query the repositories can take time)
You can use the + annotation to get a dynamic version. It can be use for the major, minor and patch part of the version. Ex :
// Major
compile group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-core', version: '+'
// Minor
compile group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-core', version: '2.+'
// Patch
compile group: 'org.mockito', name: 'mockito-core', version: '2.18.+'
But it's not a good practice to use such a dependency resolution.
Dependencies can unexpectedly introduce behavior changes to your app. Read your changelogs carefully!
The same source built on two different machines can differ. How many times have you said "but it works on my machine?"
Similarly, builds built on the same machine but at different times can differ. I've wasted so much time on builds that worked one minute
then broke the next.
Past builds cannot be reproduced perfectly. This makes it difficult to revert safely.
There are security implications if a bad actor introduces a malicious version of a dependency.

how to put to work Ionic generator?

I have an Ionic app running with the basics of Ionic and running it in the browser by doing ionic serve, but I want some new stuff and run it trough the grunt serve command, also has the feature for JSLint, I am already using this scss this: https://github.com/diegonetto/generator-ionic/ and I see that have everything I want, how do I install that in my project?
Take into account that my project is almost done, I have almost 85 % already done.
Is this the part I need to follow up:
Upgrading
Make sure you've committed (or backed up) your local changes and install the latest version of the generator via npm install -g generator-ionic, then go ahead and re-run yo ionic inside your project's directory.
The handsome devil is smart enough to figure out what files he is attempting to overwrite and prompts you to choose how you would like to proceed. Select Y for overwriting your Gruntfile.js and bower.json to stay up-to-date with the latest workflow goodies and front-end packages.
does this will bring some complications ? is there something else I need to know ?
I use the same generator and enjoy using it. With that said, I would not recommend starting to use a generator until you've made a complete backup of your project.
Even then, I'd recommend creating a brand new project using the generator then migrating your existing code into the newly generated project. While migrating, you should be modifying your code to match the generator conventions as you go. This gives you the most control and will make sure that you learn the conventions of the new project structure. Upgrading instructions are really meant for people who already use the generator and are just upgrading to a new version of the generator. They are not applicable to you.

What is the deployment workflow if using CoffeeScript and an IDE for developing a web application?

I've just picked up CoffeeScript and I'm struggling to understand the deployment workflow. It seems you constantly have to compile the .coffee files before using them. (Yes, I'm aware that you can have it embedded in the browser, but that's not recommended for production applications).
Does one have to constantly (manually) compile the files before deploying? (For example, if using Eclipse, a simple Ctrl+S saves and deploys the .war/.ear on the local machine's server.) Do we have to change the build scripts (for a central, possible CI server) for deploying .coffee files? Is there anyway to have integrated compiling via the IDEs (Eclipse/Netbeans)
Any ideas/pointers/examples on this? How/what have you used in the past?
I call browserify in my Cakefile to pre-compile and package my CoffeeScript for the browser. For an example of how I call browserify as well as coffeedoc and coffeedoctest take a look at the Cakefile for my Lumenize project.
If you are using express or some other node based server, you can have your CoffeeScript compiled at request time, using tools like NibJS or as described in The Little Book on CoffeeScript (Applications chapter), you can use Stitch. BTW, I highly recommend, The Little Book. The "Compiling" chapter has information about Cake and compiling that might help you.
Yes, you should have a build script. Most CoffeeScript projects use a Cakefile for this; see, for example, 37signals' pow. With a Cakefile, you can just run
cake build
from the command line to run the build task in the Cakefile.
You can run the Cakefile on a CI server, assuming that you have Node and CoffeeScript installed on that server.
Don't deploy the coffee files, use something like "coffee -cwj" to constantly watch and compile the .coffee files into javascript (.js) files and deploy those.
The options are c=compile, w=watch and j=join the files.
See the coffee-script web site for details of the options you can pass in.

Storing third-party framework/middleware into source control that needs to alter your compiler/IDE

I know there are posts that ask how one stores third-party libraries into source control (such as this and this). While those are great answers, I still can't find the answer to this:
How do you store third-party middleware/frameworks binaries that need to alter your compiler / IDE for the library to work properly? Note: for my needs, I don't need to store the middleware source, I only store header files / lib / JAR ..so that it's ready to be linked.
Typically, you simply link libraries to your app, and you are good. But what about middleware / frameworks that need more?
Specific examples:
Qt moc pre-processor.
ZeroC Ice Slice (ice) compiler (similar to CORBA IDL preprocessor).
Basically these frameworks/middleware need to generate their own code before your application can link to it.
From the point of view of the developer, ideally he wants to just checkout, and everything should be ready to go. But then my IDE/compiler will not be setup properly yet, so the compilation will fail..
What do you think?
Backup everything including the setup of the IDE, operating system, etc. This is what i do
1) Store all 3rd party libraries in source control. I have a branch for all the libraries.
2) Backup the entire tool chain which was used to build. This includes every tool. Each tool is installed into the same directory on each developers computer, so this makes it simple to setup a developers machine remotely.
3) This is the most hardcore, but prepare 1 perfect developer IDE setup which is clean, then make a VMWare / VirtualPC image out of it. This will be useful when you cant seem to get the installers to work in future.
I learned this lesson the painful way because I often have to wade through visual studio 6 code which don't build properly.
I think that a better solution is to make sure that the build is self-contained and downloads all necessary software for itself unless you tell it otherwise. This is the way maven works, and it is really handy. The downside is that it sometimes needs to download a application server or similar, which is highly unpractical, but at least the build succeeds and it becomes the new developers responsibility to improve the build if needed.
This does of course not work great if your software needs attended installs, but I would try to avoid any such dependencies in any case. You can add alternative routes (e.g the ant script compiles the code if eclipse hasn't done it yet). If this is not feasible, an alternative option is to fail with a clear indication of what went wrong (e.g 'CORBA_COMPILER_HOME' not set, please set and try again').
All that said, the most complete solution is of course to ship everything with your app (i.e OS, IDE, the works), but I doubt that that is applicable in the general case, how would you feel about that type of requirements to build a software product? It also limits people who want to adapt your software to new platforms.
What about adding 1 step.
A nant script which is started with a bat file. The developer would only have to execute one .bat file, the bat file could start nant, and the Nant script could be made to do anything you need.
This is actually a pretty subtle question. You're talking about how to manage features of the environment which are necessary in order to allow your build to proceed. In this case it's the top level of your code toolchain, but the problem can be generalised to include the entire toolchain, and even key aspects of the operating system.
In my place of work, we have various requirements of the underlying operating system before our code will successfully run. This includes machine-specific configurations as well as ensuring correct versions of system libraries and language runtimes are present. We've dealt with this by maintaining a standard generic build machine image which contains the toolchain requirements we need. We can push this out to a virgin machine and get a basic environment that contains the complete toolchain and any auxiliary programs.
We then use fsvs to version control any additional configuration, which can be layered on to specific groups of machines as needed.
Finally, we use custom scripts hooked in to our CI server (we use Hudson) to perform any pre-processing steps required for specific projects.
The main advantages for us of this approach is:
We can build and deploy developer and production machines very easily (and have IT handle this side of the problem).
We can easily replace failed machines.
We have a known environment for testing (we install everything to a simulated 'production server' before going live).
We (the software team) version control critical configuration details and any explicit pre-processing steps.
I would outsource the task of building the midleware to a specialized build server and only include the binary output as regular 3rd party dependencies under source control.
If this strategy can be successfully applied depends on whether all developers need to be able to change midleware code and recompile it frequently. But this issue could also be solved via a Continous Integration Server like Teamcity that allows to create private builds.
Your build process would look like the following:
Middleware repo containing middleware code
Build server, building middleware
Push middleware build output to project repository as 3rd party references
Update: This doesn't really answer how to modify the IDE. It's just a sort-of Maven replacement thingy for C++/Python/Java. You shouldn't need to modify the IDE to build stuff, if so, you need a different IDE or a system that generates/modifies IDE files for you. (See CMake for a cross-platform c/c++ project file generator.)
I've written a system (first in Ant/Beanshell at two different places, then rewrote it in Python at my current job) where third-partys are compiled separately (by someone), stored and shared via HTTP.
Somewhat hurried description follows:
Upon start, the build system looks through all modules in repo, executes each module's setup target, which downloads the specific version of a third-party lib or app that the current code revision uses. These are then unzipped, PATH/INCLUDE etc are added to (or, for small libs, copy them to a single directory for the current repo) and then launches Visual Studio with /useenv.
Each module's file check for stuff that it needs, and if it needs installing and licensing, such as Visual Studio, Matlab or Maya, that must be on the local computer. If that's not there, the cmd-file will fail with a nice error message. This way, you can also check that the correct version is in there
So there are a number of directories on the local disk involved. %work% needs to be set using an global environment variable, preferrable on a different disk than system or source-checkout, at least if doing heavy C++.
%work% <- local store for all temp files, unzip, and for each working copy's temp files
%work%/_cache <- downloaded zips (2 gb)
%work%/_local <- local zips (for development or retrieved in other manners while travvelling)
%work%/_unzip <- unzips of files in _cache (10 gb)
%work%&_content <- textures/3d models and other big files (syncronized manually, this is 5 gb today, not suitable for VC either)
%work%/D_trunk/ <- store for working copy checked out to d:/trunk
%work%/E_branches/v2 <- store for working copy checked out to e:/branches/v2
So, if trunk uses Boost 1.37 and branches/v2 uses 1.39, both boost-1.39 and boost-1.37 reside in /_cache/ (as zips) and /_unzip/ (as raw files).
When starting visual studio using bat files from d:/trunk/BuildSystem/Visual Studio.cmd, INCLUDE points to /_unzip/boost-1.37, while if runnig e:/branches/v2/BuildSystem/Visual Studio.cmd, INCLUDE points to /_unzip/boost-1.39.
In the repo, only a small set of bootstrap binaries need to be stored (i.e. wget and 7z).
We currently download about 2 gb of packed data, which is unzipped to 10 gb (pdb files are huge!), so keeping this out of source control is essential. Having this system allows us to keep the repo size small enough to use DVCS such as Mercurial (or Git) instead of SVN, which is very nice. (I'm thinking of using Mercurials bigfiles extension or file sharing instead of a separately http-served directory.)
It work flawlessly. Developers need only to check out, set an enviroment variable for their local cache, then run Visual Studio via a specific batch-file in the repo. No unzipping or compiling or stuff. A new developer can set up his computer in no time. (Installing Visual Studio takes the order of a magnitude more time.)
First time on a new computer takes some time, but then it's fast, only a few seconds. Downloads/unzips are shared on the local computer, do checking out additional branches/versions does not occupy more space. Working offline is also possible, you just need to get the zip files manually if new ones have been uploaded. (This mechanism is essential to test new versions/compilations of third-party libraries.)
The basics are in a repo on bitbucket but it needs more work before it's ready for the public. Apart from doc and polish, I plan to:
extend it to use cmake instead of raw
vcproj-files, to make it more
cross-platform.
script the entire
process from checkout/download of
third-party packages to building and
zipping them (including storing the
download in a local repo) ... currently that's on my dev computer. Not good. Will fix. :)
As for moc, we use Qt's Visual Studio add-in, which stores this in the .vcproj files. Works well. I do think that CMake is one of the best answers for this though