The process I prefer is a systematic code review of each and every commit. I am currently doing this via github and Jira, but I’ve done it before with subversion and Test Track Pro. It works just as well.

Some developer works on a feature related to multiple commits, you are assigned the ticket for review.

1. Compile a list of all the commits related to the ticket and sort them from oldest to newest. We will start the review at the same place as he started coding, that way we can understand what he was doing and follow the changes.
2. Look at the commit message, it should indicate what the work was about. If it doesn’t write a note.
3. Look at the changes in the commit, there should be a single change that is easy to follow. If this is not the case, write a note.
4. Does the code have a unit test? Does the unit test run?
5. Look at the tests, can you understand what it is asserting?
6. Are the tests testing desired outcome or implementation details?
7. Is the code easy to understand? If it’s easy for you to understand during the code review it will be easy to understand when you are maintaining it.
8. Where the correct commands used? Take the time to understand the implications of every command. If you don’t know in detail what a command does, read the documentation, dig into the command code.
9. What do the variable names look like? Do they convey what the variable is?
10. What about method names? Do they make sense?
11. Are the methods small? Less than 6 lines?
12. Does the new code respect the SOLID principles? Refresh your memory on the subject.
13. Is there a design pattern that can be used to solve the problem more elegantly? Refresh your memory on the design patterns
14. What is the scalability impact of the new algorithm? O(n!)..O(1)? Is that correct?
15. Are there any comments that imply a new method could be created?
16. Is there any commented out code?

So, to get it installed, follow the Option 2 in the json-framework install instructions, then reset the compiler to gcc 4.2 this is a key point, somehow adding the framework breaks this and you start getting all sorts of strange errors. Then finally you need to add the SDKs code signing resource rules ($(SDKROOT)/ResourceRules.plist) to the code signing resource rules path

Hope this helps!

I happened across this great article on how to use Eclipse for Blackberry development, but the real interesting bit was that the screenshots where on a Mac!! Eureka!

The only bit I want to add to that is the setup of the Blackberry SDK that I did. In my workspace (the place I keep my development stuff, not the Eclipse workspace), I copied the SDK installation except the simulator (C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.3.1) from windows on to my Workspace(~/Desktop/Workspace). Note: I replaced the spaces with -

What I wanted to do now, was to have Eclipse, on the Mac able to publish directly to the simulator living in Parallels. This was painful because Parallels mounts the C drive to a different path on every run.

To solve this, I wrote the following script to find and mount the correct path and put it in ~/bin

#!/bin/bash
c_path=/private`mount | grep fuse.*\/C | sed -e "s/^.*\/private//g" -e "s/C.*\$//g"`C
simulator_path=$c_path/Program\ Files/Research\ In\ Motion/BlackBerry\ JDE\ 4.3.0/simulator
local_jde_path=~/Desktop/Workspace/BlackBerry-JDE-4.3.0

rm -f “$local_jde_path/simulator”
ln -s “$simulator_path” “$local_jde_path/simulator

Now, to get this automatically re-linked every time I start Windows, I wrote this bat file that runs at login. This of course means that if you simply suspend the windows session you will have to manually run either the script above from the Mac or the one below form Windows.

Having downloaded Plink and placed it in C:\Program Files\Putty
@echo off
call "C:\Program Files\Putty\plink.exe" -pw XXXXXXXX you@yourmac ~/bin/link-simulator


Then you put this batch file anywhere on your windows disk and create a shortcut to it in the Start->Programs->Startup (if you really want, you can probably have the batch file live there or create a windows shortcut containing the whole line w/o the call, I haven’t tried it but I imagine it must work)

If you don’t want to keep your password in the batch file you can do the ssh key dance, plink will support it via puttygen. Someday, when I get around to doing it, I will write a tutorial about this.