let me back this up just a bit ... i was thinking more not about
specific tools so much as the whole ecosystem of what makes a decent
linux development environment. let me mention a couple issues i got to
thinking about.
first, use wikis. all the time. i've seen orgs for which every
single piece of documentation has to be written using a MS word
template, and it has to be versioned, and authors listed and ... blah
blah blah you get the idea. and once you get past all the preamble,
and license info, and disclaimers, and copyright info, finally on p. 9
of 10, there's the actual content of, "here's the command to run to do
what you're after." effectively one page of content surrounded by nine
pages of officiousness.
now, versioned, official docs are fine as an end result, but wikis
are far more suited to the chaotic churn of a software project. years
ago, as a contractor at a company where my younger brother was
employed, i convinced them to set up their first internal wiki, and it
worked great. they'd never had one before, and a small number of
people began using it extensively. why they never did that before,
i'll never know.
following on that point, if possible, make internal resources
available to the outside world so people can work remotely. case in
point -- the wiki described above was useful, but was not available to
people working from home. more generally, can anyone on the dev team
work from home if they need to, and get access to *all* the content
via VPN or something? if they can't, it's just a lost opportunity.
another issue -- given that most orgs are windows-based, how do you
give developers linux machines? actual physical linux boxes, or linux
VMs running within windows? there are arguments both ways. personally,
i'd make sure linux developers had their own smokin' fast quad core
boxes on which to do kernel compiles, but i know in some cases, that's
not practical. and, again, either way, can people work from home? if
not, more lost opportunity.
you get the idea. maybe a better question would be, if you're a
linux developer that's worked on various linux projects (particularly
kernel or embedded based), what things would you have changed at your
various contracts in order to be more productive?
rday
--
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================