Building a reliable software system
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Contents
Introduction
The challenge of building reliable systems
Criteria for successful development
Alternatives
Solution
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Introduction
Security Technology Conference attendees learned how to build a more reliable software system during a special seminar given by Cleanscape CTO Monty Swaiss in the Salt Palace on May 2, 2000.
Following is a summary of Mr. Swaiss' presentation:
The challenge of building reliable systems
Because the components of software construction are intangible, there is a misconception that the process of reliably building product out of the components is trivial. Where as many aspects of the software process have been developed extensively, the methods of controlling the actual manufacturing process have been neglected. This view, and the shortage of good approaches for the expression and control of the manufacturing process, leads to constructions that are ad hoc, error prone, poorly documented, and costly.
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Criteria for successful development
Software engineers today are looking for solid processes that will help them to simplify the software build environment, speed time to market, maximize resource utilization, and increase return on investment. In short: Better, Faster, Cheaper, More Profit.
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Alternatives
make is the most commonly used tool for managing dependencies and rebuilding programs and documentation. Unfortunately make is almost three decades old, and has difficulty handling variant builds (multiple platforms with various flavors of debugging and optimization). Make also has difficulty debugging even short scripts, and it's difficult to understand the various extensions that provide conditionals, functions, and other facilities.
Other solutions used today include autoconf and imake, but these tools have "proven to be difficult to maintain as the number of supported systems grows," according to the Software-Construction project. In short, make and similar utilities are too old and difficult to use and they don't meet the needs of today's demanding software development projects.
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Solution
qef is a make replacement "which takes a more radical approach to the problems of configuration and program construction". A high-level software construction system, qef provides a complete program development environment which operates consistently across UNIX and Windows NT platforms. qef can be used to manage, control, and configure the software construction process. qef includes tools that replace make, Imake, source code management, and dependency generators.
For more information about qef, visit qef's web site at:
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