Cocoa mail archive
Re: Why initialize the menubar without Interface Builder
FROM : Chris Hanson
DATE : Sun Nov 04 02:38:56 2007
On Nov 3, 2007, at 2:44 PM, Fritz Anderson wrote:
> On 3 Nov 2007, at 4:06 PM, Uli Kusterer wrote:
>
>> It seems perverse to me that someone would want to use NIBs in a
>> team of more than three developers, while you're effectively
>> blindfolded and can't even do a "code review" of the NIB changes
>> another developer did.
>
> I'm sure you mean more than I intend to address, but isn't this
> analogous to giving more than three developers simultaneous rights
> to edit a JPEG? As in, isn't that a _very_ bad idea, and one of the
> reasons SCM systems offer locks?
No, it's more analogous to giving more than three developers
simultaneous rights to edit a project file.
The Xcode project file format is specifically designed for this.
Since programmers typically write code in a line-oriented fashion,
while programming languages may not be specifically designed for easy
diff and merge via textual tools, it does work with them too. And
many modern languages (Python and Ruby) are in fact line-oriented...
There's no technical reason whatsoever that resources like nib files
and data models can't be designed to behave in exactly the same way,
and be easily diff-able and merge-able using standard textual SCM
tools. (The technical proof is that you can do anything in source
code that you can do in a nib or data model file, and the subsequent
source code is as diff-able and merge-able as any other source code.
QED.)
In fact, this is exactly what Microsoft has done with XAML for their
Windows Presentation Foundation framework: A XAML file is just a
representation of an object graph, but it's an XML representation
written entirely in a line-oriented fashion so diff and merge tools
Just Work with it. (This is in contrast to a xib file, which has a
bunch of binary data in it too, and doesn't necessarily guarantee
stability across edits. It's also not human-editable or human-
authorable.)
If this is a capability you would like to see in Cocoa and Interface
Builder in the future, please file a bug at http://
bugreport.apple.com/ and describe your use case. Thanks!
-- Chris
DATE : Sun Nov 04 02:38:56 2007
On Nov 3, 2007, at 2:44 PM, Fritz Anderson wrote:
> On 3 Nov 2007, at 4:06 PM, Uli Kusterer wrote:
>
>> It seems perverse to me that someone would want to use NIBs in a
>> team of more than three developers, while you're effectively
>> blindfolded and can't even do a "code review" of the NIB changes
>> another developer did.
>
> I'm sure you mean more than I intend to address, but isn't this
> analogous to giving more than three developers simultaneous rights
> to edit a JPEG? As in, isn't that a _very_ bad idea, and one of the
> reasons SCM systems offer locks?
No, it's more analogous to giving more than three developers
simultaneous rights to edit a project file.
The Xcode project file format is specifically designed for this.
Since programmers typically write code in a line-oriented fashion,
while programming languages may not be specifically designed for easy
diff and merge via textual tools, it does work with them too. And
many modern languages (Python and Ruby) are in fact line-oriented...
There's no technical reason whatsoever that resources like nib files
and data models can't be designed to behave in exactly the same way,
and be easily diff-able and merge-able using standard textual SCM
tools. (The technical proof is that you can do anything in source
code that you can do in a nib or data model file, and the subsequent
source code is as diff-able and merge-able as any other source code.
QED.)
In fact, this is exactly what Microsoft has done with XAML for their
Windows Presentation Foundation framework: A XAML file is just a
representation of an object graph, but it's an XML representation
written entirely in a line-oriented fashion so diff and merge tools
Just Work with it. (This is in contrast to a xib file, which has a
bunch of binary data in it too, and doesn't necessarily guarantee
stability across edits. It's also not human-editable or human-
authorable.)
If this is a capability you would like to see in Cocoa and Interface
Builder in the future, please file a bug at http://
bugreport.apple.com/ and describe your use case. Thanks!
-- Chris
