Xmos Software-components Quality
Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 11:40 am
I have some Issues with the software components that Xmos provide:
1. Complete lack of documentation for the examples provided
2. I am fairly confident that some of these examples are not tested before posting
3. Why do I still have to register every time I want to download
4. The licensing on these examples still hasn't been sorted and unified
I have issues currently with one of these examples as I posted here but its not my first brush with the troubled examples. I seem to have wasted inordinate amounts of time with some of these examples to the point of pulling my hair out!!
So I would like to see a concerted effort by Xmos to improve this situation and hence improve developer experience with Xmos products in the future, with that in mind I have thus started this thread with a few suggestions to kick things off:
1. Every example should have a wikipage on the Xcore Exchange wiki for the purpose or documenting each example.
2. Every example placed in the software examples area should be tested with each current version of the Xmos toolset as they are released. If there are issues with any versions this should be documented in a matrix (table) on the appropriate example wiki page.
3. In order to help the above (2) we may also benefit from an XC test suite maybe extend Unity or some other simple test framework. Obviously testing is very complex with IO but the examples should at least be manually tested with the current Xmos development boards, as well as some basic unit testing. Some how we need to set a quality standard that can be relied upon.
4. Lets make the downloads really simple, maybe just add them to them to the wiki, that way when we are logged into Xcore Exchange we can just download them without the extra processing steps required on the current scheme (registration etc..).
5. Please can Xmos sort out the licensing on the code examples we seem to have been waiting eons for this to happen references here :
http://xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=474&hilit=licence
http://xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=452
6. What would be really great is for Xmos to create a coporate Github account and place the source code there. If money is an issue they offer free accounts for opensource code which would be perfect for the examples. This would allow developers to test, explore and improve the examples.
Can we do this, who else has ideas to streamline the examples, lets get it sorted..
1. Complete lack of documentation for the examples provided
2. I am fairly confident that some of these examples are not tested before posting
3. Why do I still have to register every time I want to download
4. The licensing on these examples still hasn't been sorted and unified
I have issues currently with one of these examples as I posted here but its not my first brush with the troubled examples. I seem to have wasted inordinate amounts of time with some of these examples to the point of pulling my hair out!!
So I would like to see a concerted effort by Xmos to improve this situation and hence improve developer experience with Xmos products in the future, with that in mind I have thus started this thread with a few suggestions to kick things off:
1. Every example should have a wikipage on the Xcore Exchange wiki for the purpose or documenting each example.
2. Every example placed in the software examples area should be tested with each current version of the Xmos toolset as they are released. If there are issues with any versions this should be documented in a matrix (table) on the appropriate example wiki page.
3. In order to help the above (2) we may also benefit from an XC test suite maybe extend Unity or some other simple test framework. Obviously testing is very complex with IO but the examples should at least be manually tested with the current Xmos development boards, as well as some basic unit testing. Some how we need to set a quality standard that can be relied upon.
4. Lets make the downloads really simple, maybe just add them to them to the wiki, that way when we are logged into Xcore Exchange we can just download them without the extra processing steps required on the current scheme (registration etc..).
5. Please can Xmos sort out the licensing on the code examples we seem to have been waiting eons for this to happen references here :
http://xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=474&hilit=licence
http://xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=452
6. What would be really great is for Xmos to create a coporate Github account and place the source code there. If money is an issue they offer free accounts for opensource code which would be perfect for the examples. This would allow developers to test, explore and improve the examples.
Can we do this, who else has ideas to streamline the examples, lets get it sorted..