RE: Am I wrong?

[Paul Sander]

Agreed.

"My tool of choice for software reuse used to be the editor, until I inherited
60,000 lines of code from someone who felt the same way.  Now my tool of choice
for software reuse is the linker."  -- me, 1988

Abstracting out the shared code into shared or static libraries is far easier
than trying pull in the sources.  The builds go faster, too, because the 
libraries
can be pre-built and kept in baseline builds.

Tracking references to the baselines can be a pain, but in the long run it's
still easier than dealing with the maintenance nightmares of shared source code.
Take a look at the buildref tools at http://www.wakawaka.com/source.html for
one successful method of doing this.

--- Forwarded mail from address@hidden

[ On Monday, June 25, 2001 at 15:26:45 (-0700), Delos Nash wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: Am I wrong?
>
> Could you explain?
> Yes I've heard of Libraries, but I don't understand your reference...

Shared code should be modularised, documented, and put in a library.

You can then manage it as a separate product (even if only internally),
including whatever level of release management is appropriate.

Then the libraries can be compiled and installed on every development
platform (just like any other development tool or resoruce), and all the
other code that "shares" the library code can simply link against it.

Doing this will undoubtably upset any programmers who haven't yet fully
understood the impact of "sharing" modules with other projects, but
that's a *good* thing in the long run!  :-)  The library approach is a
very real representation of what they've got to do anyway.

--- End of forwarded message from address@hidden