[ODE] "Configuration Management"

[nlin@nlin.net]

Adam Moravanszky amoravanszky at dplanet.ch wrote:

Russ-> important things to do right now are the boring non-physics things
Russ-> like configuration management. good configuration management will
Russ-> make ODE immediately useful to more people than extra features at
Russ-> this point.

Adam-> project, then I will do it anyway.  But what exactly do you mean by
Adam-> configuration management?

"Configuration management" refers to the area of the entire software 
development lifecycle dealing with stable, trackable, and reproducible
management of software configurations and versions. This can include source
code control, bug tracking systems, release numbering, multi-platform
build support, etc - in other words, anything that involves a "configuration"
of the entire software system and every single file, resource, and bit
which defines the entire software system. In the case of ODE this refers
to the make system and selecting options during compilation for the target
platform, ODE features, shared/static library, etc.

As Russ said: "boring." Large corporations have entire teams devoted to
this area.

I already did some work in this area for ODE, allowing it to be compiled
as a Windows DLL for easier compliance with the LGPL, which hopefully
will be worked into future ODE releases. However, there is certainly a
lot more which can be done in this area, as Russ pointed out.

-Norman