Software Engineering

["Stephen Andrew Neuendorffer" <neuendor@eecs.berkeley.edu>]

> One of the things we've added in 2.0.1 is a way to include unit
> tests and system tests with the Soot distribution, and have them run
> automatically. Previously, each Soot user kept his own set of random
> tests, which were frequently out-of-date with respect to changes in
> Soot, and which were not contributed to any common place.

Obviously, this will help alot...

One thing you might be interested in is the following technical report 
which describes
some techniques for approaching software engineering in a research 
context.  In particular, one technique
that we find helps alot in managing code from dfifferent people is code 
rating... Each java class carries
a javadoc tag that describes our confidence level in the code.   Code 
starts out red and becomes
yellow and green as confidence increases.  We tie these ratings to design 
and code reviews, but that
is not, strictly necessary.  Code ratings make it easy to develop new code 
without others expecting
too much of it in the beginning, and also helps to communicate maturity and 
dependence of code.  For instance, code that
is green often has alot of dependent code, and we think harder about making 
significant changes to such code.

http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/papers/99/sftwareprac/software-practice.pdf

Steve