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Video: High-Quality Code - Development Tools (Bulgarian)

  • August 01, 2021
  • Nikolay Kostov (Nikolay.IT)

Topics covered:

  • Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
  • Source Control Systems (Git, SVN, TFS)
  • Logging Tools
  • Bug Tracking / Issue Tracking Systems
  • Code Analysis Tools
  • Code Decompilation Tools
  • Code Obfuscators
  • Code Profilers
  • Refactoring Tools
  • Continuous Integration Tools
  • Deployment in the Public Clouds

Video (in Bulgarian)

Presentation Content

Visual Studio

  • Visual Studio is official .NET development tool from Microsoft
    • Multiple languages: C#, VB.NET, F#, C++, …
    • Multiple technologies and platforms: ASP.NET, WPF, WiForms, Silverlight, WWF, WCF, iOS, Windows Mobile, Android, NodeJS, Xamarin…
    • Very powerful and feature rich
    • Write, compile, model, design GUI, forms, data, build, execute, debug, test, deploy, refactor, …
    • Commercial product, has free editions

Other IDEs

  • JavaScript IDEs
    • WebStorm, Sublime Text, VS, Atom, Notepad++
  • Java IDEs
    • Eclipse, Android Studio, NetBeans,IntelliJ IDEA, Jdeveloper
  • C++ IDEs
    • Code::Blocks, Bloodshed Dev-C++, VS
  • PHP IDEs – PHPStorm, Zend Studio, phpDesigner
  • Ruby – RubyMine
  • Objective C (iOS) – Xcode, AppCode

What is а Source Control System?

  • Source control systems (version control systems, source control repositories)
    • Hold the source code and project assets during the development process
    • Allow simultaneous changes in the source code and conflict resolution
    • Keep version history of the project assets
  • Some of the most popular source control systems: Git, SVN, TFS, CVS

Git

  • Distributed revision control system
    • Support for distributed, non-linear workflows
    • Very efficient and secure
  • Initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development in 2005
    • Become one of the most widely adopted version control system for software development
  • Independent full-fledged working directories
  • Used by GitHub
  • Allows variety of workflows to be used

Git: Centralized Workflow

  • Someone initializes the central repository
  • Everybody clones the central repository
  • John works on his feature
  • Mary works on her feature
  • John publishes his feature
  • Mary tries to publish her feature
  • Mary rebases on top of John’s commit(s)
  • Mary resolves a merge conflict
  • Mary successfully publishes her feature
  • More info

Git: Feature Branch Workflow

  • Still uses a central repository
  • Developers create a new branch every time they start work on a new feature
    • Instead of committing directlyon their local master branch
    • Feature branches should have descriptive names
  • This makes it possible to share a feature with other developers without touching official code
  • Branches make it possible to discuss changes via pull requests
  • More info

Git: Gitflow Workflow

  • Defines a strict branching model designed around the project release
    • Same but more complicated, for large projects
    • Assigns very specific roles to different branches
  • Master and Develop branches
    • Master stores theofficial release history
    • Develop serves as anintegration for features
  • More info

Git: Forking Workflow

  • Developers push to their own server-side repositories
  • Only the project maintainer can push to the official repo
    • Allows the maintainer to accept commits from others without giving them write access
  • An ideal workflow for open source projects
  • Can be combined with other workflows
  • More info
  • Subversion (SVN)
    • Popular and well established system
    • Free, open-source, very large community
    • TortoiseSVN – the most popular client
  • Two versioning models:
    • Lock-Modify-Unlock and Copy-Modify-Merge
  • Official web site:
  • Runs on Linux, Windows
  • Console client - svn
  • GUI client

TortoiseSVN

Lock-Modify-Unlock Model

  • The lock-modify-unlock model needs locking files before modification
    • One file is modified by at most one person in any given moment
    • No conflicts, no need of merge
    • Suitable for small teams
      • When changes almost don’t need concurrency
    • Basic commands: check out, check-in
    • Implemented in: Visual SourceSafe, (TFS, SVN)

Copy-Modify-Merge Model

  • Copy-modify-merge model does not hold locks during the source code modification
    • The same file could be simultaneously edited by multiple developers
    • Sometimes requires conflict resolution
    • Suitable for large teams and projects
      • High concurrency of source code modifications
    • Basic commands: update, commit
    • Implemented in: SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, TFS
  • Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS)
    • Works best with Visual Studio
      • Hard to use outside of it
    • Commercial license

Other Source Control Systems

  • CVS
    • Was extremely popular in the past
      • Now it is obsolete
    • Open source, mostly used in UNIX / Linux
  • Git and Mercurial
    • Fast, distributed, open source
  • Perforce
    • Very powerful and scalable (petabytes of code)
    • Commercial product (used by SAP)

Logging

  • Logging is chronological and systematic record of data processing events in a program
    • E.g. the Windows Event Log
  • Logs can be saved to a persistent medium to be studied at a later time
  • Use logging in the development phase:
    • Logging can help you debug the code
  • Use logging in the production environment:
    • Helps you troubleshoot problems

Log4J / Log4Net

  • Log4J / Log4Net are a popular logging frameworks for Java / .NET
    • Designed to be reliable, fast and extensible
    • Simple to understand and to use API
    • Allows the developer to control which log statements are output with arbitrary granularity
    • Fully configurable at runtime using external configuration files

Log4j / Log4Net Architecture

  • Log4Net has three main components: loggers, appenders and layouts
    • Loggers
      • Channels for printing logging information
    • Appenders
      • Output destinations (e.g. XML file, database, …)
    • Layouts
      • Formats that appenders use to write their output

Hello Log4Net – Example

class Log4Net_Example_
{
  private static readonly ILog Log =
    LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(Log4Net_Example_));
  static void Main()
  {
    BasicConfigurator.Configure();
    Log.Debug("Debug msg");
    Log.Error("Error msg");
  }
}
  • Output from Log4Net Example
2010-12-16 23:25:08 DEBUG Log4Net_Example_ – Debug msg
2010-12-16 23:25:08 ERROR Log4Net_Example_ – Error msg
…

Bug Tracking Systems

  • Bug tracking / issue tracking systems
    • Track bugs / issues related to software development, called tickets
  • Tickets consist of:
    • Category: bug / feature request / task
    • State: new → assigned → fixed → closed
    • Priority: critical / high / low / etc.
    • Owner / responsible person
    • Summary, description, attachments

SCM and ALM Systems

  • Software Configuration Management (SCM systems (e.g. Rational ClearCase, StarTeam)
    • Change management for requirements, documents, source code, etc.
    • Tools, policies, workflow, etc.
  • Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) systems (e.g. VSTS + TFS, StarTeam, Polarion)
    • Covers the entire development process
    • Requirements, planning, project management, architecture, build, QA, test, integration, etc.

Code Analysis Tools

  • Code analysis tools
    • Analyze the source code for bad coding style / unwanted coding practices (StyleCop)
  • Static analysis
    • Examine the source code at compile-time
    • Could work with the source code or with the compiled assemblies / JAR archives
    • Examples: JustCode, ReSharper, FxCop, VS
  • Dynamic analysis
    • Analyses the code at runtime (usually done by code instrumentation) (profiling, tracing)

Code Decomplation

  • Code decompiler / code disassembler
    • Reconstructs the source code (to some extent) from the compiled code
    • .NET assembly → C# / VB.NET source code
    • JAR archive / .class file → Java source code
    • .EXE file → C / C++ / Assembler code
  • Reconstructed code
    • Is not always 100% compilable
    • Loses private identifier names, comments, etc.

Code Decomplation Tools

  • Code decompilers
    • .NET
      • JustDecompile – free, powerful .NET decompiler
      • ILSpy – powerful, great usability, free
      • ILDASM – part of .NET SDK, decompiles to IL code
    • Java
      • DJ Java Decompiler
      • JD (JD-Core / JD-GUI / JD-Eclipse)
    • .EXE file
      • Boomerang Decompiler → outputs C source code
      • IDA Pro – powerful disassembler / debugger
      • OllyDbg, W32DASM, etc.

Code Obfuscation

  • Transform the source code or compiled .NET / Java code into a difficult to understand form
  • Obfuscated code has the same behavior
  • Sometimes is a bit slower due to changes and additions in the control logic
  • Obfuscated code is the opposite of the high-quality code
  • Obfuscation is a form of security through obscurity

Code Obfuscation Techniques

  • Rewrite for-loops as while-loops followed by a series of cascading if-else statements
  • Change iteration into recursion
  • Obfuscate programming constructs (e.g. turn if-else statements into ?: operators)
  • Introduce meaningless identifier names
  • Remove intermediate variables and literals by repeating them as expressions in the code
  • Remove literals (e.g. 0 and 1) – use expressions
  • Randomize code formatting

Simple Obfuscation – Example

  • Original source code in C#
long first = 1
long second = 1;
for (int i = 3; i <= N; i++)
{
  result = first + second;
  first = second;
  second = result;
}
return result;
  • Obfuscated and decompiled
long _ = 1L;
long __ = 1L;
for (int ___ = 3; ___ <= _____; ___++)
{
    ____ = _ + __;
    _ = __;
    __ = ____;
}
return ____;

Obfuscation Tools

  • .NET obfuscators
    • ConfuserEx
    • Eazfuscator.NET – free
    • {smartassembly} – commercial license, very powerful – assembly obfuscation + compression
  • Java obfuscators
    • ProGuard – free, open-source
    • yGuard – free, open source
  • C++ obfuscators
    • Stunnix C++ Obfuscator – commercial product

Profilers

  • Profilers are tools for gathering performance data and finding performance bottlenecks
    • Implemented by code instrumentation or based on built-in platform debugging / profiling APIs
    • Gather statistics for method calls, uses of classes, objects, data, memory, threads, etc.
  • CPU profilers
    • Find performance bottlenecks
  • Memory profilers
    • Find memory allocation problems

JustTrace Profiler

  • What is JustTrace?
    • Designed for code and memory profiling
    • Measures the frequency and duration of function calls
    • Collects information about memoryusage

Refactoring

  • Refactoring
    • Improving the design of the existing code without changing its behavior
  • Typical refactoring patterns
    • Rename variable / class / method / member
    • Extract method
    • Extract constant
    • Extract interface
    • Encapsulate field

Continuous integration (CI)

  • Automating the build and integration process
  • Build the entire system each time any new code is checked in the source control repository
  • Run all the automated tests for each build
  • What does “continuous” mean?
    • Ideally – build it after every check-in
    • Practically – for larger systems, every 1-2 hours
    • Or at least a couple of times a day

Components of the Continuous Integration System

  • Build server – separate machine (or pool)
  • Source control repository
    • Subversion, Team Foundation Server (TFS), etc.
  • Automated build system
    • Ant, NAnt, MSBuild, Cruise Control, TFS, etc.
  • Status indicators / notifications to make problems visible right away
    • Email notifications / tray build notify utilities
    • Public build status monitors

CI Systems

  • CruiseControl
    • Very popular, powerful, open source CI tool
    • Extensible, plug-in based, large community
  • CruiseControl.NET
    • .NET cloning of CruiseControl
  • Hudson
    • Powerful Java based CI server, open source
  • Team Foundation Server (TFS)
    • TFS provides build-in continuous integration
  • AppVeyor
    • Cloud-based for .NET / example

What is Cloud?

  • Cloud ≈ multiple hardware machines combine computing power and resources
    • Share them between multiple applications
    • To save costs and use resources more efficiently
  • Public clouds
    • Provide computing resources on demand
      • Publicly in Internet
      • Paid or free of charge (to some limit)
    • Azure, Amazon AWS, Google App Engine, AppHarbor, Rackspace, Heroku, …

AppHarbor

  • AppHarbor – cloud platform for .NET apps
    • Supports a classical .NET development stack
      • C#, .NET Framework, ASP.NET (Web Forms and MVC), WCF, WWF, ADO.NET Entity Framework, …
    • Deployment through Git / SVN / TFS
      • Automated build process(compilation + unit tests)
    • Build-in load balancing
    • Rich set of add-on services

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