RE: refactoring when using CVS

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, February 25, 2002 at 10:28:03 (-0800), Glew, Andy wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: refactoring when using CVS
>
> In XP, development *IS* maintenance.

In an ideal world, maybe.  However if you can do XP over the real life
of something of any significant size, then you've either figured out how
to do magic, or you have a time machine stashed away in your office (and
I'll be "renting" some "time" on it real soon now!  ;-).

XP is a good way to do development of one-off things, of small things,
and to do initial development of larger long-lived things.  It does not
however extend to maintenance of those larger long-lived things, at
least not without "fixing XP when it's broke".

No even a semi-sane user is going to upgrade every time you produce a
new release, not if the product is anything substantial, and if you have
any significant number of users you will end up doing maintenance on old
releases without upgrading the user to a current release.  Refactoring
an implementation during maintenace is something you want to avoid
unless doing so will cost more than the inevitable fallout.

> Refactoring is supposed to be done in maintenance at the drop
> of a hat.

No, refactoring is supposed to be done in development.  XP has no
concept of maintenance as it is necessary for larger long-lived
projects.

Also, in XP "refactoring" is something you do at the design level.  How
that falls out to the implementation is undefined.  :-)

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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