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Distributing In-House Engineering Code?

caswelmo asks: "My company has recently moved from Solaris workstations to Windows workstations (Ohhh, the humanity). As an engineering focused company, we use our computers to run many in-house (command line) codes to analyze and design our products. We currently use NAS storage to store everything and use batch files and init scripts to run the correct codes over the network. This makes sure everyone is running the latest version. This also stinks. I know this isn't an original problem, so what are some other solutions for rolling out lots of simple codes like this?"

9 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Let me get this straight by MerlynEmrys67 · · Score: 4, Funny
    You did a platform migration before you had even a clue how to perform business critical functionality ?

    I don't know what is worse - that you went to Windows, or you had no idea how the heck to go to windows.

    --
    I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
  2. I hear QBasic is good... by bergeron76 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think that Windows ships with the QBasic scripting / operating system language.

    From what I hear, it's quite capable for simple "shell scripting" style tasks in Windows like:

    "command.com /e command.com > com1"
    and
    "echo ^G"

    Have fun!

    --
    Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
  3. cygwin by blackcoot · · Score: 4, Informative

    step 1: move all that stuff into cvs / source control system of your choice.

    step 2: install cygwin on all the machines (http://sources.redhat.com/)

    alternately: use ms's unix system services (go digging on the m$ website) theoretically this will give you a "real unix" running inside windows.

    at least this way you don't have to spend as much effort porting your old tools.

    1. Re:cygwin by foote · · Score: 5, Informative

      Simon Peyton Jones, a Microsoft researcher in England who does a lot of work on Haskell (for Microsoft?), has a cheat sheet that "summarises all the things I do to make my Win2k machine more useful to me."

      www.research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/win32-cheat.ht ml

      It's rather funny, as much of what he does is make the system more like Unix, with tools like:

      • Emacs, ispell for Emacs, Emacs tags tables
      • Latex
      • A good Telnet client
      • Cygwin
      • Services for Unix
      • CVS
      • GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler)

      He describes how to set things up so he can:

      • Export Postscript from a Word, Excel, or Powerpoint document
      • Include LaTeX equations in Powerpoint slides
      • Draw a Powerpoint/Visio picture and include it in a LaTeX document
      • Convert between Word and LaTeX
      • Include typeset material from Postscript into a Powerpoint slide
      • Include mathematical symbols in Word documents

      And more. Useful stuff in general for when you're forced to work on Win machines.

  4. Hey, that's funny! by eyepeepackets · · Score: 3, Funny

    "My company has recently moved from Solaris workstations to Windows workstations..."

    Didn't check it first to see if critical work could be done?

    Okay, here's what you do:

    1. Send the person who made this decision to Singapore to be caned;
    2. Send his boss to Singapore to be caned and send the boss' dog for caning too as the dog may be the true decision-maker here;
    3. Get yourselves someone who has more than a two digit I.Q. to be your boss;
    4. Profit!

    Ciao.

    --
    Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
  5. #1 Sign Your Pointy-Haired Boss Doesn't Know.... by John_Booty · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...anything about code:

    As an engineering focused company, we use our computers to run many in-house (command line) codes to analyze and design our products. We currently use NAS storage to store everything and use batch files and init scripts to run the correct codes over the network. This makes sure everyone is running the latest version. This also stinks. I know this isn't an original problem, so what are some other solutions for rolling out lots of simple codes like this?"

    ...he/she refers to source code as "codes". At least that's what the rumors on the internets tell me!

    --

    OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
  6. Trying for a serious answer. by chris_mahan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Make python executable (with py2exe) on shared drive, linked from win desktops as shortcut and launch on startup.

    said script has dedicated local directory like: c:\ourscripts\
    and synchs everything from the network at launch. Script remains running and checks via xml-rpc for updates and will throughout the day get updates to particular files. If you do the xml-rpc check every minute, you'll have near-realtime distribution of cli scripts to windows clients.

    I am assuming you have less than 1k people to do that with in your org. One server could easily handle it.

    by the way, redhat autoupdate uses xml-rpc.

    This has the advantage not to need any local machine deployments of software packages.

    Let me know privately if you need this sort of solution built. Or ask the python mailing list.

    --

    "Piter, too, is dead."

  7. Re:#1 Sign Your Pointy-Haired Boss Doesn't Know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, that indicates that it is really an engineering company. Among people whose first interest is science and programming is only a tool to solve scientific problems, it is common to refer to programs and libraries that solve specific problems as "codes". It is also a good bet that if it's called "a code", it's written in FORTRAN. And due to their science education, the authors were probably oblivious about principles of good software engineering.

  8. Re:use the tools that Bill sold you. by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's all ok except for the CVS part. Use subversion and you will have it right.