<I><FONT COLOR="#663300">Thoughts, anyone?</FONT></I>
Lots. How much time do you have? <bg>
I spent the better part of 3 months getting everything to work together when I decided to do the cleanup. I have had to make modifications to the c-layer even with the i-layer because there are certain inherited behaviors that cannot be changed and because backward compatibility (to versions that I have never used) required certain things be part of every project that I am not using. I find it very distracting and disconcerting to have things compiled into the project that I don't use and don't understand. I actually have my base set of c- and i-classes down to 10 (of each).
<I><FONT COLOR="#663300">I am thinking about whether or not I should convert any of my apps from CB5.I have two rather large apps. One is likely to remain rather static</FONT></I>
Why don't you try compiling this static app over the latest version of 6.1 and see how many errors you get. Ed has worked very hard at backward compatibility. The problem will be the changes you have made to the c-classes on which your app is dependent. If you see that it is going to be a long road to make this app work over 6.1, I wouldn't do it for a static app.
<I><FONT COLOR="#663300">The other is likely to be changed slowly over the next few months (and maybe years) as the client asks for new features.</FONT></I>
This one would probably be worth the effort and the exercist would definitely get you clear on how the various parts of Codebook work together.
<I><FONT COLOR="#663300">I really don't want to have to use two frameworks (CB5 and CB6.1). </FONT></I>
I have had extensive conversations with Christof Lange on this subject (and he has quite a bit of experience with it) He is a strong advocate of maintaining a separate set of base classes for each project. He maintains that as you are enhancing a base class for a new project, there is no way that you can be absolutely certain that is won't break something in an older app. The pressure to meet deadlines it too great to properly regression test all you apps the way they should be. Of course his framework is not nearly as integrated as Codebook. There is one base engine and all the rest of the pieces are completely encapsulated.
<I><FONT COLOR="#663300">And I would like to be up to date with the rest of you.</FONT></I>
A worthy goal and another reason why I would advocate your maintaining two separate sets of base classes. Setting up so that one app looks at CDBK and another looks at CB61 is not as big a deal as retrofitting a static app to use a revised set of base classes. You don't need to keep all the template and utils stuff in the older version, only the files that is actually uses.
Regards,
Pamela
pamela (at) eagle-crest D.OT com
©2001 Pamela Thalacker |
