Formatted Discussions

[Ole Ersoy <ol...@yahoo.com>]

Hey Guys,

(I'm going to put this in my recommendations for
contribution work (On the wiki), but I figured I'd
share the idea upfront in case anyone wanted to try
it)

I started using this Challenge / Solution format
for breaking up my various coding projects into little
pieces that I can easily think through and test.  I
really like it because later on when I'm wondering
"What the heck did I do there" I just go back and look
at the challenge.  Plus it's an easy template that I
can pull content from later when I want to produce
derived works.

Here's an example:

Challenge

     Generating an Editor for an Ecore
     Model with types contained in an external
     demand loaded resource.
     
Solution

     Bluh Blah Bluh

Discussion

     Blah Blah Blah

One thing that sprung to mind while doing this
is what if we did this more formally.

The end goal would be to produce as much documentation

during the initial discussion phases (With Virtual
Directories as for example) as possible while 
at the same time breaking the discussion into several
focused challenges that are interrelated and can be
found by looking at the 

Related Challenges 

section.

This could also be used as follows:
- Create several challenge / solution items 
  for a particular sub project.  Then ask for help
  with those items.  This lets people that want to 
  help us get a clear and focused starting point.
- Create a challenge focused wish list.  This
  encourages those asking for new features
  to put it in a format we all understand upfront
  and puts them in a better position to break it
  up for us.
- Someone asks us how do we do this?
  We say look at challenge: blub blah
  So if challenge blub blah does not
  yet exist, we create it.  Next time
  someone asks for blub blah...it's easy 
  to find.

I'm using this approach for the JPackage donation
to help the JPackagers get going with the plugin
quickly and to drive future development of it, so 
that will be the first real world example.  Almost
done.  I had to make a quick pitstop donation to the
Eclipse EMF project to get all the poms to load.

Cheers,
- Ole





 
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