g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) (07/26/84)
[------ Warning: Commercial Proprietary Software Announcement -------] Product Name: The Aide-De-Camp (TM) System. Company: Software Maintenance and Development Systems, Inc. Address: PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742 Net Address: cca!g-rh Machines: VAX, Pyramid, Apollo, Cadmus, PDP, Masscomp (currently) Sun, Prime, AT&T, Plexus, Data General, Perkin Elmer, NEC, and others (near future) Oper. Systems: UNIX (III, V, 4.1bsd, 4.2bsd), XENIX, VMS (currently) Primos, Perkin Elmer OS, others (near future) Pricing: Variable, depending on machine -- $5k to $25K, binary licenses. Discounts for multiple machines, restricted and unrestricted site licenses available. Source licenses available. Language: Vanilla C Memory: Program space ~180K (VAX 780), data space as much as 500K, depending on usage. Availability: Now. Synopsis: The Aide-De-Camp system is a software engineering development system. The system has two major functions; it manages a software information database and it provides a superior version management system. It is designed to be a central utility for software project development. Description: The Aide-De-Camp system is an interactive manager of a software database. The database contains a user defined dictionary of software terms, dependency relationship tables (history controlled), source code files (history controlled), user defined attribute tables, history tables, names of people, control lists, etc. Predefined relationships include: calls (as in one function calls another), contains (a file contains a function), includes (a file includes another file), refers (one entity refers to another), is (an entity has an attribute), and depends (user defined dependency between entities). Relationship information can be entered interactively; a program which scans C files and produces relationship information automatically in a form suitable for input to the ADC system comes with the package. The history control subsystem is integrated into the system. The Aide-De-Camp (ADC) history control subsystem compares favorably with SCCS and RCS in the following respects: (1) ADC Version control is software project wide. (2) ADC change sets (deltas) are independently reversible. (3) Relationships are history controlled as well as source. (4) ADC version control (and databases) are transportable across operating systems. (5) ADC change sets can contain changes to several files (6) Concurrent development and migration of change sets from one independent version to another is supported. On line query of a function or file gives, the date and author of definition and installation, the true name (if aliased), and the revision history. Queries of functions also give the name of the file that it is in, the name of all functions called, the name of all functions calling it, and the names of all other functions in the file, and the list of all files included by the file containing the function. Queries of files are similar. All queries print out entity abstracts (documentation file(s)) for the entity if they exist. Cross references to related information is also given. Printed reports can be produced. Master reports include cross referenced call trees for all programs, full dependency table printouts (both ways) for all relationships, the software dictionary, detailed change history for the software being managed, descriptions of all versions and control lists, and more. Annotated source listings give a full descriptive prolog which includes revision history, dependency information and more. Source code lines are annotated with a line number, the originating change set, and the chronological line numbers. List of entities such as functions, files, and change sets can be created. Most commands accept lists as arguments. List building is powerful; simple commands give the list of all files changed by a list of change sets, the list of all files containing procedures calling any procedure in a list of files, etc. Commands are generally smart about translating procedures into files and vice versa. For example, you can tell the system to write a list of procedures to your directory and it will write the correct version of the files containing those procedures from the database to your directory. A command to write make files is included. Answers to common questions: (1) Names are restricted to 127 bytes. There is no limit on length of commands or on number of commands stacked other than operating system limits on available memory. (2) The Aide-De-Camp system is language independent. To a large extent it is operating system independent. Aide-De-Camp databases can be transported from one machine to another. (3) Aliases can be defined and removed. Anything can be renamed, including ADC system commands. (4) Databases are secure against system crashes (barring hard disk failures.) Database contents are never overwritten during updates. Currently the system only permits one user at a time to have write access to a database; multiple read accesses are permitted. For more information, write to SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742, send a message to me via Usenet (cca!g-rh), or telephone us at 617-369-7398. Richard Harter Aide-De-Camp is a trademark of Software Maintenance and Development Systems, UNIX is a trademark of AT&T, VAX and PDP are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation, XENIX is a trademark, VMS may be a trademark, and vendor names are probably trademarks.