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Chapter 3: SDE Software Development Tools

3.1 Configuration Management Tools, SDE-CORE

Configuration Management is a term meaning:

• Keeping track of software versions.
• Support for building the software and handling dependencies between software modules. RCS and Make are widely used Unix tools for configuration management and they are available also in HP-UX. SoftBench (described more in Section 3.3) adds a graphical user interface but keeps essentially the same functionality.

RCS and Make alone are not sufficient for large projects, however. The main idea with SDE is to provide configuration management in a way more suitable for large projects. The resulting configuration management system is called SDE-CORE, SDE Configuration and Release Support.

SDE-CORE uses GNU RCS and Make from Free Software Foundation as a base; these utilities are included in the SDE product. The main advantage of using GNU RCS, instead of the HP version, is that binary files can be version controlled. This means that RCS can be used to handle documentation, for example in FrameMaker format.

Plain RCS only supports version control of single, independent files. SDE-CORE adds support for hierarchical system structures, and configurations, version controlled collections (releases) of files.

Plain Make is primarily used for performing builds of a single directory containing all source files. SDE-CORE adds a methodology for how to handle dependencies between subsystems, and tools to automatically generate correct dependencies in the Makefiles.

SDE-CORE includes support for change management using Change Requests:

• connections between logical changes and the changed files
• possibility to connect to external problem report system (PMR)
• possibility to follow the progress of a project
• traceability from an initial problem report to the resulting source code changes, and the new product version that solves the problem SDE-CORE also includes support for product handling, e.g. how to generate a distribution package for a new product version, and automatically generate parts of the product documentation.

SDE-CORE can be divided into several layers, as shown in Figure 3-1.



Fig 3.1 SDE-CORE layers

3.1.1 SDE-CORE shell commands

All SDE-CORE functions are available as shell commands that can be used in a a terminal window. They are all documented in the SDE Reference Manual, and on-line as Unix manual pages. The manual page sde_overview contains a list of all SDE commands.

We recommend, however, that you first of all use SDE-CORE's graphical user interface, as described next.

3.1.2 Graphical User Interface to SDE-CORE

SDE-CORE includes several graphical user interface applications, all of them integrated in SoftBench. An SDE menu is also added to SoftBench's Development Manager, with useful SDE-CORE commands.

To start the graphical user interface, use the command:

It will start SDE Control Panel, from which the other tools can be started.

The following tools with graphical user interfaces are provided:

SDE Control Panel

SDE Control Panel is a top-level tool for SDE:

• It controls the project environment for a user.
• It manages all SoftBench tools in the SDE environment. The window shows the projects that the user works with, and the user can easily login to a project, or switch between projects, by double-clicking a line in the window.



Fig 3.2 SDE Control Panel, main window

SDE VersionWorks

SDE VersionWorks supports daily project work in the SDE environment:

• It provides a window into the version database (the RCS files) for a subsystem, where you can look at and manipulate selected versions.
• It is a navigator tool for the subsystem directories used in a project. See Figure 3-3.



Fig 3.3 SDE VersionWorks main window

SDE CR Manager

SDE CR Manager is a tool for managing Change Requests (CRs), logical changes and their connections with actual source code changes.



Fig 3.4 SDE CR Manager

SDE Project Manager

SDE Project Manager is a tool for administrating projects (directory structures, members, etc.):

• Create, delete, rename, and terminate projects.
• Add and remove project members and common work directories.
• Add systems to projects, remove systems from projects.



Fig 3.5 Project Manager, main window

SDE System Manager

SDE System Manager is a tool for managing systems:

• Create systems, configurations, and subsystems.
• Perform release work on a configuration: check the status of the versioned files, select file versions for the release/prerelease, copy files to product, freeze the configuration, establish the configuration.



Fig 3.6 System Manager, main window

SDE Product Manager

SDE Product Manager is a tool for managing products.

• Create (structures for) new products.
• Perform release work on a product: create (structure for) new release, merge release, change protection, rename products.
• Generate Product Specification document in FrameMaker format. See Figure 3-7.



Fig 3.7 SDE-Product Manager

For more information see

• Getting Started with SDE
  3BSE003487
• SDE-CORE User Interface
  3BSE003488
• SDE-CORE Methods
  3BSE003486
• Make Usage And Makefile Structuring
  3BSE004527
• GNU Make User's Manual
  3BSE001520

3.2 SDE Utilities

SDE Utilities is a collection of useful Unix utilities:

• Create window and login on remote nodes.
• Create, generate and update man pages.
• Directory handling commands: ¯ Create a directory tree, and make symbolic links to files in a directory tree.

¯ Modify or show permission and owner for files in a directory tree.

• Graphic presentation and printing tools:

¯ Print source code files on a Postscript printer.

¯ Show a data graph as an X window.

¯ Show a tree structure in an X window.

• C/C++ source code formatting.
• C/C++ source code line counter.
• Produce manual page files by extracting comments from source code files.

3.3 SoftBench Tool Integration Framework

SDE works closely together with SoftBench. SoftBench comes in one of two shapes: C/SoftBench or C++/SoftBench. It is possible to upgrade from C/SoftBench to C++/SoftBench.

SoftBench can be described using a "toaster" model:

Fig 3.8 SoftBench Framework

SoftBench is both a general tool integration framework (SoftBench BMS), where e.g. all graphical SDE-CORE applications execute, and a default set of well-integrated programming tools.

These default tools support the edit-compile-debug cycle:

• The compiler (or rather make) can be started from the editor.
• For each compile error, you can easily be positioned on the erroneous line in the editor.
• When all compile errors are fixed, the debugger can be directly started.
• From the debugger, the editor can be called up at the current source line.
• The static analyzer can be used to ask questions about where different identifiers (functions, classes, variables, etc.) are declared, defined, or referenced. This will save a lot of time for you during the coding phase, and increase your productivity. The tools are easy to use and do not require much education. You will be able to use the tools almost immediately.

More complicated and advanced tools like Gnu Emacs can be used in addition to SoftBench.

At delivery, C/SoftBench contains the following tools for software development:

• Editor
• Development Manager
• Program Builder
• Program Debugger
• Static Analyzer
• Compare and Combine
• Help The Editor is good and simple to use. Using mouse and menus you can start to use it almost immediately.

The Development Manager shows the files in the current directory and provides menu choices for many file operations. Besides its fixed menus, it has an Actions menu which is dynamically updated according to the selected file. The available actions are determined from the filetype. For a .c file, for example, available actions are Compile, Edit, Print, etc. SDE adds some menu items in the Development Manager for easy access to SDE-CORE commands.

The Program Builder is used to integrate the edit-compile cycle. When compiling, the editor can be positioned at the place of every compile error. This is very handy, and saves a lot of time.

The Program Debugger is a SoftBench encapsulation of a debugger called dde. This debugger originally has a command-line interface. The SoftBench encapsulation provides a menu-and-mouse interface, and also makes the debugger integrated with the rest of the SoftBench environment. For example, an Editor window can be requested for the current program line in the debugger.

The Static Analyzer offers an interactive hypertext-like utility for making cross-references of all identifiers used in a program. It is integrated with the editor tool, so that cross references can be requested directly from the editor. Typical questions are: Show me all classes, where is this member function defined, where is this variable referenced, etc. An editor window can be automatically positioned at the requested places.

The Compare and Combine tool is used to show differences between files, and to merge the contents of two files into a new file.

The Help tool provides easy access to all information about SoftBench itself and about tools encapsulated in SoftBench.

In the product C++/SoftBench these tools are updated to handle both C and C++. More information about SoftBench can be found in Hewlett Packard's documentation.

SDE includes several additions to SoftBench to make it easier to use.

3.4 Documentation and Editing tools

Two editors are recommended for use within SDE: FrameMaker for technical documentation (desktop publishing) and SoftBench Program Editor for programming.

An alternative to SoftBench Program Editor is Gnu Emacs. Gnu Emacs is a powerful editor from Free Software Foundation, Inc. SoftBench may be customized to use Gnu Emacs instead of SoftBench Program Editor (see the instructions in /usr/softbench/emacs/README). Note, however, that SoftBench's Static Analyzer only works well if the standard SoftBench Program Editor is used.

A comprehensive description of FrameMaker and its use together with ABB templates can be found in the binder (from SEISY/LQM)

• ABB Templates
  3BSE000157