I'm evaluating options to make our search more powerful on our .Net website. I need to look into whether we purchase software/hardware such as the Google Search Appliance (GSA) or develop the solution using a framework such as Lucene.Net
We're a startup, and the GSA provides a lot of good functionality out of the box, but we would need two boxes, with the second as the backup/dev environment and things start getting expensive.....
We have used SQL Server full text in the past, but we're keen to provide very intuitive "Googlesque" type searching to our site and we've struggled to do everything we want with SQL Server.
But, I am not sure what "incubator status" for the Lucene.Net project actually implies. Should I be considering a project that is in incubator status? Is it not active? Will it at some point move into a more active status or be archived off?
Thanks
Lucene.NET is a currently active and updated project. The fact that is hosted as incubated under Apache is a good thing and not a negative one. As you can read on Apache incubation site, Lucene.NET is awaiting for a review and a final approval, but this doesn't mean it's unstable or unsupported.
Concerning your main question, i think using it for the development stage would be an accepptable choiche if you're a startup.
I am not sure what "incubator status" for the Lucene.Net project actually implies
It means that the project, which was an external project, is being evaluated by apache for inclusion in the apache "stable" - I guess they have to make sure the processes are right, that there isn't patented code in there etc etc.
It has NO reflection on the code. Lucene.NET trunk is stable (v2.1), and the downloadable version (v2.0) is also stable, but not "as stable" or as updated.
If you have more questions, I'd suggest you jump on the mailing list (http://incubator.apache.org/lucene.net/) and ask George or DIGY. I've been using it on commercial projects - both internal (http://www.topgear.com for example) and packaged (not sure I can say, but it's an email archiver) since 1.xx, and it works GREAT.
I'd suggest you have a look at Solr, too. It uses the Java Lucene, and is basically an external search server, but you push info into it, rather than it trawling your site. It's on the apache lucene site.
Log4net was in incubation status for a long time in the Apache project. It was still recommended and used extensively. I'd be ok with using Lucene.Net for a couple of reasons. First, as #ste09, says incubation status is a good thing. Second, Lucene (the Java version) is a full-fledged project at Apache. Similar to log4j/log4net, I think this bodes well for Lucene.Net making it out of incubation status.
Related
I am looking for a good self hosted notes taking app (self hosted via WebDav, I use OwnCloud)
Some tools that I have currently ruled out - and the reasons why. Happy to be mistaken:
Laverna looks alright but it doesn't support WebDav, and I didn't find a straight forward way to sync it via, for instance, a "database" file or similar.
Tagspaces can be synced just by syncing folders but saves the tags in the filenames (not sure I can think of any scenario in which that would be acceptable). The PRO version saves the tags in "sidecar" files, but the functionality is marked as beta and the PRO version is more expensive than Evernote - it means paying quite a bit for less functionalities (even though the idea behind tagspaces looks quite unique) and hoping that it works.
OpenNote and PaperWork projects seem not very mature or active either.
I don't seem to find any other good tool out there - whether paid or not.
Thanks
You can use ownCloud with ownCloud Notes (https://github.com/owncloud/notes) in the web, it uses WebDAV for syncing. And it integrates with QOwnNotes (http://www.qownnotes.org/) on the desktop. There also is an iOS and Android app that talks to ownCloud Notes.
You know, the next "big" and "enterprisey" thing from Microsoft.
Is it just me, or is it really hardly for humans? Main highlights are (IMO):
Absolutely cryptic syntax (-skip:objectName=filePath,absolutePath=App_Offline.* just for skipping App_Offline.html)
Manifest as an after thought
Lack of thorough documentation
Not a word about extensibility (except for several blog posts out there). Moreover, all these extensions developed in great pains have to be registered in GAC and registry
Waaay too low-level (metadata/metakey; all this IIS jazz)
No integration with MSBuild
Granted, MSDeploy and MSDeployAgent are quite powerful, but do they really need to be that complex for relatively simple tasks?
I too share your frustrations over the lack of documentation and the apparent low-level nature of this tool.
However what MS has done is finally create a free tool with which you can actually script whole server deployments, including parameterising addresses, configurations etc. This is unfortunately a very complicated thing to do - given how many bits of configuration actually go into a web server - and this is probably the best way to do it all.
What we need now is a really good GUI that can help build up these packages, and scripts etc. The GUI that is embedded within IIS is good - but again, short on explanation - so hopefully soon that'll be addressed.
On the functional side, I'm using at the moment to deploy a site from dev -> staging -> live with parameters to change bound IP addresses etc. I was deeply frustrated that it took me a few days to get it all working - however now I have it, I can remove a lot of the possibly of human error at the IT Support side - who are responsible for our deployments. I now only have the configuration of my master staging server to worry about - and can be sure that all the servers in the web farm will be kept in sync whenever I deploy.
As Sayed mentions, as well, there are MSBuild tasks in 2010 (the Website Deployment feature is now implemented using msdeploy) to work with this - which also brings the possibility of a true Continuous Integration environment to VSTeamSystem - having a team build that can actually perform a full web deployment as its last step is very exciting (and scary, granted!).
Actually there are MSBuild tasks for MSDeploy. They will be shipped with .NET 4/Visual Studio 2010.
Although a bit rough around the edges, I've come to like MSDeploy quite a bit. Using it to sync web servers in a farm is very useful as it is efficient (only copies changes) and takes care of actual IIS settings in addition to content files. It seems like MSDeploy is a building block for various scenarios and uses. Also, as previously mentioned, there is a MSBuild task for MSDeploy in .NET 4. I've taken advantage of this MSBuild task to make deployment of my web applications from TeamCity trivially easy. I've blogged here it here:
Web Deploy (MS Deploy) from TeamCity - http://www.geekytidbits.com/web-deploy-ms-deploy-from-teamcity/
I have recently started implementing a deployment pipeline and I found below links quite useful:
MSBuild commands I used for Continuous Integration:
http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/11/you-deploying-it-wrong-teamcity_24.html
WebDeploy sync commands, I used for deployment packages to production server:
http://sedodream.com/2012/08/20/WebDeployMSDeployHowToSyncAFolder.aspx
Also I used these references:
Video about MSBuild on dnrtv.com
Microsoft Press book called "Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build" which you can buy PDF version from Oreilly
Finally, "Continuous Delivery" book, gave me good ideas about deployment pipe line, although the book is not focusing on MSDeploy, but it is really worth reading.
The statement of documentation is typical of a MSFT 1.0 product, unfortunately MSDN no longer have dedicated Developer Technology Engineers to fill the gaps --- instead, there is a blind faith that the web will provide it.
I am actually considering dusting off my writing skills and write a short ebook on it since there is likely a market for it....
Msdeploy definitely has a touch of the PowerShell to it: power over simplicity rather than worse is better.
There is no Windows alternative to it, however you can hybridize some of its powers to make automated deployments. For example:
Compile your solution with Team City and msbuild
Use msdeploy to transform your site and web.configs on the build server
Manually FTP a ZIP file of your site (it doesn't support FTP)
Alternatively, use its remote deploy capabilities. This requires port 8172 open, lots of security changes and as far as I'm aware no concessions for load balancing
Use msdeploy on the live site to sync changes
As a tool it's clearly aimed at service providers as it's an enormous Swiss army knife. You can do all kinds of things to IIS with it, which for the most part are over kill for small businesses. I've no experience of large scale IIS setups so maybe that's where it shines.
I just started at a new company that has 99% of their code written in classic ASP (most of it poorly written) and part of the reason they hired me was because I had worked with both ASP and ASP.NET in the past. The ASP.NET experience was VB.NET but I've worked with C# in college but I prefer it just because I've worked a lot with PHP in the past and when I'm not focusing I just start typing C syntax and have had many occasions here in ASP where I end lines in a semi colon just out of habit and have to go back and delete it.
But I digress, basically I just don't have the knowledge I need to make the best decisions on things have made notes of some key processes that I'd like advice on:
Version Control - truth be told I've never really used it. On my own I just never had that whoops moment to push me to use it and shops I've worked in have always just thrown caution to the wind. Would like to know what you all think I should use as far as the server side and
Local Dev Environment - Probably something I'll just quickly Google but I want to setup a local dev environment so I can test stuff without having to FTP it somewhere first.
Pushing Changes Live - I've never really understood the step between checking something into version control and seeing it live, is there some sort of automated system that can go "hey I see you checked in, let me see what's different between this and the live version and push the affected files" – possibly just a lack of vc understanding all together: (
IDE - Downloading VS2010 Beta 10 now, hoping it's stable
MVC.NET - Easy to pickup? I always hated the whole concept of Web Forms, seemed like it didn't ultimately fit the Internet the rest of the world is developing.
Anything Else - Like I said I'm relatively new to this stack so I'd love any advice I can get early on to avoid any "shit, I wish I knew that 3 months ago" moments.
Version Control:
Definately have a look at SubVersion, its free, we use a paid-for hosted service called Assembla (www.assembla.com) but you can install the server on your network. Themost popular client is called TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/) its also free.
You can also have a look at VisualSVN (http://www.visualsvn.com/) which integrated into the VS IDE, their site also has a handy SVN server installation.
Local Dev Environment
Local IIS or Built-in VS web-server in VS are both fine, it really down to preference I think. Opening a website (File-system based) rather than IIS based seems to work quite well for us.
Pushing Changes Live
ASP is very page by page based development and doesnt require compiling, copying files up to a test or production site is quite easy. Depending on how you compile/publish your asp.net site, you will need to consider how you compile library code and publish your web application/website.
I would recommend starting off by using SVN to commit changes and to update test/production sites.
IDE:
I would recommend updating to the latest Beta version of VS2010 and use that.
Anything else:
Consider the rollout, are you replacing everything before going live?
Consider adopting an existing framework, use an ORM, or Business Objects framework, possibly even use Code-Generation. Have a look at CodeSmith, it has various ORM/Business Object Frameworks associated with it. (these will use various teqniques and technologies in the .net framework, which you will need to learn)
Look at the basic structure of the site:
Consider asp.net WebForms (Applications) or MVC (Websites) [yes, this is a very basic analysis of the differences]
Site Membership and Permissions: Have a look at the MembershipProvider, RoleProvider and build your own.
File System: Consider how and where you will upload files.
Separate UI into re-usable UserControls.
HTH, Good Luck you have a lot to do...
Wow. lots of questions here:
Version Control - Look into Subversion and Git. They represent two kinds of version control, you might like one more than the other. Git is free for open source projects.
Local Dev Environment - I would recommend using the built-in web server in Visual Studio. You can right-click a page in your solution explorer and say "view in browser". Then it will just compile it right there and open up an instance of the local web server.
Pushing Changes Live - I am not gonna offer advice here. Someone smarter than me will surely do so.
IDE - Yeah, just stick with the current version of Visual Studio. If you don't have any active (for pay) projects, I think the VS2010 is a good idea because it supports the newest upcoming features of asp.net and by the time you learn them, it will probably be released to the public anyways.
Anything Else - It's worthwhile (from getting work perspective) to know WebForms in and out. But I would highly suggest learning ASp.Net MVC (if, for no other reason than, "it's more fun").
After reading Mark Redman's answer, it triggered something for me. I would recommend (as he does) that you investigate some sort of ORM. I use SubSonic and really love it. Bu t there are lots of options out there.
Those are my 2 cents.
I'm going to focus on versioning and project tracking here. Development environments for ASP.Net are well documented.
Version Control - I use SVN (version control) with Tortoise SVN (windows client integration) and Trac (project tracking). SVN and Trac both run on Apache (a web server).
Pushing Changes Live - Commit your changes to SVN from your dev machine, do a SVN update on your test site to pull down the latest changes from the repository, run tests, then do a SVN update on your production site.
Anything Else - In this scheme Apache, Subversion, and Trac will be running on a server that is NOT your development machine and hopefully (but not necessarily) also not the same server that is running your production IIS.
Check out:
Apache HTTP server: http://httpd.apache.org/
Subversion: http://subversion.apache.org/
Tortoise SVN: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
Trac: http://trac.edgewall.org/
One thing to take account of is basically going from Classical ASP to ASP.NET is about as similar as going from COBOL to ASP.NET. Everything will basically need to be a complete rewrite (especially as you said there were poor development practices in the original codebase)
Version Control: Definitely use it, there's also Team Foundation Server which if you can convince the company in the value of purchasing you a MSDN subscription TFS is included at no additional cost for 5 or less users.
Pushing changes live: I currently use Web Deployment projects (not sure if they're compatible with VS2010), TFS is also a build server I just haven't had time to setup the responsibility for that. If you take advantage of TFS fully I'd also recommend looking into a continuous integration (CI) tool something along the lines of Jetbrains's TeamCity or CruiseControl etc.
Local Dev Enviroment: Get Jetbrains's Resharper! This is the number one most important tool to developing software in .NET second only to Visual Studio itself!
Anything else: Learn generics and lambdas/expression trees both are integral to proper software development in .NET and both are moderately to extremely complex topics (IMO).
Version control: I see many recomendations of SVN here but... it's just outdated. Use GIT or Mercurial. They merge algorithms are more robust. The are faster and safere because they are distributed. They are more flexible - you can construct a workflow model that suits your company well while there is basically one way of using SVN.
Pushing changes live: After you have version control, the next thing to do is making a Continous Integration server thah repeatedly checks out repository and perform automated build. You can get immediate information who and where made an error. You can make this build do anytking you want: perform static code analysis, unit tests, deployment. You can make several builds - one, automatic, that builds a project and deploys it to a testing environment. And another one, triggered manually, that will deploy to live. I worked with Hudson, Jenkins, CruiseControl.NET, TeamCity and I've found TeamCity to be the most user friendly tool of that four.
Local dev env: Althoug IIS Express (that Visual Studio built-in) is OK in many cases, you have to know where it differs from the 'real' one. I would just recommend using the full IIS 7.
IDE: Visual Studio + Resharper + Notepad++ + LINQPad.
Anything else: Have some bug tracking/planning software. Even as simple as http://www.trello.com, but use it. My favourite is http://www.pivotaltracker.com
Introduce code review into the workflow. http://www.reviewboard.org might help.
I am going to develop my first application (4 members team).I am not aware of source control tool ( Visual
source safe,Tortoise SVN).
My .NET version is 3.5. What is the best source control tool ?
Is CruiseControl a source control tool ?
Definitely avoid Visual Source Safe.
Subversion is probably a safe choice, but you will have to elaborate about your situation (E.g. how big is your team?) to get more specific advice.
Another no vote for Visual Source Safe here.
Might be an idea to get familiar with subversion as - just as others mentioned - it's widely adopted, so might be useful in the future and simply works..oh and it's free too!
TortoiseSVN integrates into the windows explorer and is both easy to use and well documented so I would give it a try.
If it's a small project of yours and you don't want to worry about hosting, I would recommend signing up for a free account at something like beanstalk, to keep it safe, without any hassle.
But if it's your first ever project, it might just give you too many additional things to learn about, so you might want to put it aside for a while.
Try GIT, it's much lighter weight than svn
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gitextensions/
you can use a local repository for just checking in your own work (to keep a history, or to keep a working version before changing everything) Or you can connect to a central repository for enterprise source control.
The company where I work used to use the SVN, Tortoise, Ankh stack but we're using Git now. Plus I use it at home on my on play projects.
(quated part is no more important since you edited your post about team size)
If you are doing some small project on
your own, maybe you shouldn't use code
versioning at all because you probably
don't need it. Code versioning helps
you with central code storage,
multi-person development code merging
(several people working on the same
file and then commit changes) and code
branching to name the most important
ones.
If I were you, and I would be the only
person developing something simple, I
wouldn't use it, because it would also
be a bit of a time-overkill.
But otherwise source control doesn't address technology like .Net framework version. Code control only stores files (with history) and is able to merge text files. Written in whatever language possible.
If you are part of a team I'd suggest using Subversion + TortoiseSVN + AnkhSVN
And No, CruiseControl is not a code versioning system. It's a continuous integration system.
If you have a pure Windows environment then VisualSVN server is a Windows version of SVN server and installs easily and cleanly. You can setup security using Windows usernames and passwords, or SVN usernames and passwords.
You can then use Tortoise to provide integration in Explorer and VisualSVN to provide Visual Studio integration (there's a small cost for VisualSVN) or you could try AnkhSVN if all you want is VS integration and don't want to spend any money. Personally I prefer VisualSVN's integration.
Running a GIT server under Windows is, umm, frankly a pain in the ass, and not a route I'd recommend for beginners. VS integration is also fraught with pain.
As with everyone else I'd say avoid SourceSafe like the plague.
CruiseControl is not a source control system, it's an automated build server. It monitors source control servers looking for changes, then checks everything out, compiles it and runs it through your unit tests, so people know if they've broken the build. Once you have source control up and running it's the next big step towards a better build environment.
Before we start talking about source control, I would like you to consider your actual need for it, if this is to be your first .NET application. Is this your actual first attempt of writing some .NET 3.5 code? If so, I doubt that you need to worry about source control just yet. I would say it's not just a little bit overkill for the first learning projects.
On the other hand, if this is to be your first application that you'll actually sell to someone, it's a completely different matter.
I currently use VisualSVN, an add-in to Visual Studio that lets you do check-in, check-out etc from within the environment. Along with it, I use the free SVN repository service at XP-Dev. It works well for me =)
Your choice of a versioning system does not have to do anything with the .NET version you are using.
I'd vote for Subversion / Tortoise SVN. It's rock-solid, has lots of handy features, widely adopted and free.
I'm a newbie developers and building an application with 3 other remote developers. I've only worked alone until now, and now I need a way to share my source code with the other developers on the project. All of the project sites out there (SourceForge, Codeplex, Google, etc) seem to be aimed at Open Source development I'm not interested in making our code available to the world, I'm just looking for a method of sharing the code among the four of us. What is the best known method...or how is this usually accomplished?
Set up a Subversion repository (can be accessed across http).
There is an excellent online free book detailing pretty much everything you need to know about Version Control with Subversion
Yep, you need a version control repository which is remotely accessible. Subversion is excellent and very widely used; Git is another good option.
You could set up your own repository - you'll need a server which all devs can access via ssh, or via Apache/WebDAV - or use a hosted service, like Beanstalk, Project Locker, Unfuddle, SVNsite, etc.
http://beanstalkapp.com/
Set up a Subvserion repository (http://subversion.tigris.org/). You can control who may view your data through accounts, plus it gives you document versioning. When paired with a Http server, you can even view the source directly in a browser.
Subversion has all sorts of plugins for Eclipse and even Visual Studio, I believe. Tortise SVN is a stand-alone SVN client you may like, although I recommend an IDE-integrated plugin.
Subversion also goes well with a continuous integration server, such as Continuum.
Hosted: http://wush.net is another Subversion hosting platform.
Or, if you can host your own server, check out the VERY easy to use and VERY free VisualSVN Server: http://www.visualsvn.com/server/
You don't say what computing resources you have available, but the easy choice is to use a central server with say SVN to which you all have ssh access using a public key. You can probably rent such a service for around $10 per month.
If you don't like central servers, you can try Mercurial or git and ssh back and forth between your personal development machines.
If ssh is problematic, git actually enables you to send patches to each other by email (probably Mercurial does too). Ben Lynn's Git Magic tutorial explains.
You can use an online source control (like SVN or Git), and share it only with your team members. You should look into Unfuddle, it's a free source control/project hosting, complete with bug tracking system. I use it for my personal projects and it's awesome.
I think the best solution is Subversion. Subversion is a free source control system that is ideal for your requirement.
You can use many other support tools like Tortoise SVN to make the things more easier.
Here is one of the cheat sheets that describes commands of SVN.
Most of the Web hosting providers support easy one click installation of SVN on their servers. ex : Dreamhost So you can get a setup done very easily.
CVS is another Source control system that are used widely but I haven't seen any providers that support easy installation of CVS but there should be. You can have support tools for CVS such as Tortoise CVS as well.
I don't think you are interested in visual source safe (Microsoft Proprietary and not over Web) so I am not going to add information about it here. :)
You need to set up a source control repository. It's a pretty big topic, I'm really not sure where the best place to start reading about it would be. I'm sure the Wikipedia article on Revision Control will at least give you a bit of an overview.
This seems like a decent introductory series as well: Source Control HOWTO
Subversion works just fine over http/https. It is an open source project, but you can use it for whatever purposes you want.
http://subversion.tigris.org/
Most modern source control systems work well. Subversion is a common one. Which operating system will the developers be running?
If you just want to get up and running quickly with something, check out a hosted subversion system like www.beanstalk.com or www.unfuddle.com.
Subversion is open source, and I know you don't need it, but there are a lot of options here. If on Windows, check out Tortoise SVN. If on a Mac and you don't want a command line client, check out Versions.
You can actually setup google code to only allow viewing/editing by registered members. And I don't think they force any licenses either.
We currently use VSS but are in the process of migrating everything over to Source Gear Vault because VSS makes jumping out of our third story windows a common thought...
Here is a free solution with premium options available... https://freepository.com I have not tried this one.
Try github. It will cost you $12/month though.
Just use devunity.com. upload your code via zip or import it from svn and thats it. lets you collaborate around code instantly.