lori@hacgate.scg.hac.com (Lori Barfield) (05/31/89)
I'll be evaluating DSEE for purchase soon. Anyone have any gotchas, favorite features, comparisons with other products, or other potential "I told you so"s to share? Thanks in advance, ...lori
derstad@CIM-VAX.HONEYWELL.COM ("DAVE ERSTAD") (05/31/89)
We've used DSEE here since 1985. My project was the first at our site to make use of DSEE, and we've been relatively happy. Favorite bells include concurrent building on multiple nodes (easy to set up, just use a "set builder //gollum //frodo //gimli //sauron //ugluk" or whatever), which dramatically decreases the amount of wall-clock time required to build, especially at the tail end of release cycles where we're typically rebuilding entire software systems; the revision archiving and audit trail facilities; and the task list manager, which we use to keep things from slipping through the cracks and to keep junior programmers and students on track. For reference, we do software as part of an integrate package for ASIC design (along with cell libraries). We have about 150 to 200 thousand lines of text in DSEE, mostly code, in about 80 modules. I couldn't imagine doing my job without DSEE anymore. Dave Erstad DERSTAD@cim-vax.honeywell.com Principal Design Automation Engineer Honeywell SSEC
hoefling@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu (06/02/89)
If you want to use file names that contain UPPER CASE letters, DSEE is a
pain to use. It is case-insensitive and converts any upper case letters it
sees to lower case. For a module name like "p_EXTERNAL.c", you have to write
it as "p_:e:x:t:e:r:n:a:l.c", which is pretty painful. Also, when BUILDing
your system, it simply can't find files that you have checked-out ("reserved"
in DSEE) in your working directory if any part of the file name or the
path contains even one upper case letter.
Except for this drawback, it's pretty nice, although I'm not sure I
would have used DSEE had I known about this beforehand.
Jay Hoeflinger
Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
UUCP: {ihnp4,uunet,convex}!uiucuxc!uicsrd!hoefling
ARPANET: hoefling%uicsrd@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
CSNET: hoefling%uicsrd@uiuc.csnet
BITNET: hoefling@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edureb@quintro.UUCP (Roger E. Benz) (06/05/89)
In article <11400011@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu> hoefling@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu writes: > >If you want to use file names that contain UPPER CASE letters, DSEE is a >pain to use. It is case-insensitive and converts any upper case letters it >sees to lower case. For a module name like "p_EXTERNAL.c", you have to write >it as "p_:e:x:t:e:r:n:a:l.c", which is pretty painful. Also, when BUILDing >your system, it simply can't find files that you have checked-out ("reserved" >in DSEE) in your working directory if any part of the file name or the >path contains even one upper case letter. > Release 3.2 and 3.3 of DSEE is case-sensitive. 3.2 is for SR9.7 nodes and 3.3 is for SR10 nodes. Also, I have been using DSEE for three years and I really like it. Its best features are: Remote building using NCS, -target option for building different versions of the software for different platforms, multi-user and multi-node support DSEE can be ran from either a node or a terminal connected to a serial port. As far as task lists and monitors we don't use them (they could be useful, however). One thing I have learned is that for just one person on a project DSEE is a little more cumborsome than using 'make'. But if two or more people are involved DSEE is nice. -- Roger E. Benz Phone = (217) 223-3211 Quintron Corporation Quincy, Il UUCP: tiamat!quintro!reb@uunet or quintro!reb@lll-winken
slocum@hi-csc.UUCP (Brett Slocum) (06/05/89)
In article <3860@hacgate.scg.hac.com> lori@hacgate.scg.hac.com (Lori Barfield) writes: >I'll be evaluating DSEE for purchase soon. Anyone have any gotchas, >favorite features, comparisons with other products, or other potential >"I told you so"s to share? > >Thanks in advance, > >...lori I would confirm Dave Erstad's comments about DSEE. We used DSEE on a huge SW project involving a team of programmers that changed often, 100-200 K lines of code, and software that was full of kludges, etc. We performed so efficiently, that we had extra contract funds left over for additional functionality. About half the code was new development, and the other half was existing code that needed massive reworking, enhancements, input and output filters, and maintenance. The DSEE performed both of these functions well. -- Brett Slocum <uunet!hi-csc!slocum> | If you keep your head, while everyone or <hi-csc!slocum@uunet.uu.net> | else loses theirs, you'll be the only or <slocum@hi-csc.honeywell.com> | one needing a haircut.
nazgul@apollo.COM (Kee Hinckley) (06/07/89)
In article <11400011@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu> hoefling@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu writes: > >If you want to use file names that contain UPPER CASE letters, DSEE is a >pain to use. It is case-insensitive and converts any upper case letters it Thankfuly this is not true from SR10 on. In general, if you have a problem where the system is not acting JLRU (Just Like Real Unix) prior to SR10, then there isn't much that can be done. SR10 was a *major* effort to get things right. That's not to say things are perfect, but if it doesn't work it's much more likely to be a bug than a "feature" :-). -kee
derstad@CIM-VAX.HONEYWELL.COM ("DAVE ERSTAD") (06/07/89)
Just a minor point. Contrary to what some Apollo publications might imply, DSEE does not use NCS for remote builds. Instead, the remote build stuff was kludged in by the DSEE writers. If you ask someone they'll generally confirm that. For that matter, it must be true because no location brokers are needed to run DSEE. I would think that at some point in the future this might change, especially since sys_admins are going to have to learn enough NCS-ese to handle the registrys at SR10, so adding DSEE builders isn't as big a step. This information is correct as of 3.2.1 Dave Erstad Principal Design Automation Engineer Honeywell SSEC DERSTAD@cim-vax.honeywell.com