Monthly Build Goals

Current Release

May (release date Friday, May 26th 2006)

Overall, we want to take the stuff we did last month, and 'get it right' in the application. This includes: 3D Widgets, state, undo/redo, and building pipelines.

• Process: Add informal and frequent UI discussions, with live demos.
• Goal: Make last month's stuff useable (largely UI work ...)
• Goal: Fully support 5 common filters.
• CS 3D Widget Integration
• CS UI iteration on Exodus object inspector.
• MR Pipeline Browser II.
  • Fan-in support.
  • Delete of pipeline items.
  • Save/Restore working properly.
  • Testing, documentation in repository.
  • Next: integration with Accept/Reset.
• CM Prism over ParaQ.
  • Commit preliminary Prism code to ParaQ repository.
  • Pursue Compound Filter work, because we'll likely use it to support Geometry and SESAME views.
• TS PGraph.
  • Extraction/Reduction filters and Render Module completed.
  • Hooking data to Clients.
  • Preliminary design for Client UI interaction (how does a user actually chart data?)

Previous Releases

April (release date Friday, April 28th 2006)

• Full support for building pipelines, including:
  • 3D widgets
  • Pipeline editor with fan-out support (user can easily understand connections, types of objects, state of those objects)
  • Undo/Redo on all operations
• File->Open, File->Save, File->Save As, File->New all need to work.
• Top-level 'Accept/Reset' buttons, properly connected to all operations.
• Bottom status bar (for now, this will mainly give feedback on popup help)
• Simple, Two-panel Default UI configuration:
  • Left Panel: pipeline browser and object inspector
  • Right Panel: render window.
  • Initial support for UI configuration file, including initial application geometry.
• Properly functioning Top-level VCR time controls (see bug 3075)
• Properly functioning Top-level Current Variable controls.
• First round support for Compound filters:
  • Compound Filter Toolbar, which shows loaded compound filters.
  • Ability to load compound filters from a designated place in the distribution (no need for user to browse).
  • Stretch goal: ability to save a set of filters as a compound filter. Saves current settings only - no control over UI when it is loaded.
• Initial Release Test Plan, captured in a recorded test.

Connection questions

• How will we connect to a parallel server?

Possible Add-ons (for completeness)

• Help
• Quick way to send feedback
• Usage tracking

March (release date Friday, March 31 2006)

Goals

This is our first monthly build, designed to start the habits of our development process. So, it's a bit light on content. It's our initial executable release, not intended to be released to users. This is a chance for us to get our repository ready for full-on development, and get Testing, Coverage, and Testplans in place.

Action Items

Item	Bug	Who	Status	Desc.
001	2976	BG	Done	Reformat repository
002	2977	BG	Done	Doxygen operates on entire repository
003	2977	BG	Done	Code properly commented (so Doxgen works on the entire repository
004	2978	BG	Not complete	Dashboard is green. BG will pursue miscreants and ne'er-do-wells
005	2979	BG	Ongoing	Adequate code coverage
006	2980	MR	Done (with ongoing feature requests)	Auto-generated object inspectors should be improved. In particular, useful widgets when possible, and the most eye-pleasing design possible. A general goal is that the automatically-generated object inspectors should be as well-designed, useful, and pleasing to the eye as possible.
007	2981	TS	Done	Demo-specific code removed
008	(none)	DR	Done	Action Items should be put into bug tracker. Make sure that all people are in bug tracker.

Summary of results

Good first month effort. It took quite a bit to re-format and update the repository - more than was originally expected. The updated auto-generated UI elements look super, but several XML-related things we'd like to do before we consider this item totally finished (check the bug tracker for these items). We tagged the repository, and we're addressing next month's build task at Sandia, so that we can be prepped for a quick turnaround of the April release.

The ParaQ dashboard is now 'useful', according to Berk, but we're not at a 'green' state yet. This was likely an unrealistic goal, given the timeframe of this release. There needs to be time (and, more importantly, the support for taking the time) for developers to write tests, and to make certain their checkins haven't broken the dashboard. We're definitely ramping up on this, so make space in your development schedule for tests and dashboard cleanup.

Our coverage will ramp up as SNL and ETI develop more tests for the UI components. Per Tim's suggestion, this will start in earnest in mid-April, when he's developed the infrastructure for runtime name checking on Qt objects.

We need to carry over the 'Code coverage' and 'Green dashboard' items and monitor them for a while. Still, a good first month - Nice work, everyone!