Developer News - 22_CW04 - Our developer team getting hot

At our last livestream with the preview of the new executors in DMXControl 3.3 we already said it: Before we can release the new version, there are still numerous construction sites to be closed. The list of open points is still long. Also, our beta testers are by far not yet at the state that it is said: "so slowly we can think about a release". So, we have to keep on adding new lines of code to the development environment, throwing out other lines and whole blocks and testing, testing, testing.

In the first weeks of this year, there was so much going on that our development environments were literally running hot. Our Git, where the source code is managed, gives the following statistics for the past four weeks for DMXControl 3 alone: "5 authors pushed 211 commits to Master and 352 commits on all branches. On Master 716 files were changed and there were 24,309 inserts and 14,099 deletions". By inserts and deletes, the system here means lines in which one or more characters were changed. Behind these numerous changes are, among other things, redesigned windows, which from now on will be developed with the window framework "WPF". With this we do not mean the new executors, which you already know from our livestream. For DMXControl 3.3 we also must completely rebuild several windows. We will tell you which ones in due time - maybe even in one of the next livestreams. However, all these modifications serve the long-term goal of banning the currently additionally used frameworks "Windows Forms" and "XNA" from the GUI. A uniform framework eliminates special tricks and hacks to still be able to offer functions somehow. This can also increase the overall performance. In addition to the optimizations, the bug fixes in the substructure also progressed in the last few weeks. For example, numerous bugs have been fixed, which were caused in particular by the reconstruction of the network communication between the kernel and the GUI. This also includes the loading of projects from the currently available version of DMXControl 3.

All these last very intensive and extensive development activities were or are possible, because in the past weeks many of our club members and our beta testers had correspondingly much spare time available. So, this could be put among other things into the work around DMXControl 3.3. Sometimes, however, the development activities happened under "difficult conditions": Patrick's new animal roommate Sayu, for example, is often very affectionate. The entire team has already witnessed this live in recent meetings, much to the general amusement of everyone.

It wasn't just the developers who had a lot going on. Also, our beta testers could deal intensively with the alpha versions of DMXControl 3.3 in the past weeks. This resulted in numerous new tickets in the bug tracker. The same applies to already existing tickets, which were extensively commented. Thereby the selection is large: At present the test log leads over 230 tickets, whereby there were corrections, additions etc. with 45, which are to be tested with the last distributed alpha version (partly again). For this reason, the bug tracker has also been running hot, because there have been a correspondingly large number of ticket movements.

Even the DMXC wiki did not remain untouched by the whole hustle and bustle. Even if there is still no concrete release date in sight, there is a lot to do in the run-up to a release. For this reason, some additions have already been made to the documentation, which will then be available to you with DMXControl 3.3. This has additionally the charm that our beta tester team receives directly already a reference book, in order to test the numerous innovations regarding their desired functionality. The best example are again the new executors.

Finally, this news is not only meant to be an update for you, dear community, giving you an insight into the current activities. It is also meant to be a thank you and an acknowledgement to all the people involved, who bring the whole project forward with so much passion. But a special thanks also goes to the spouses, friends and all the others who allow "our" team members to pursue their hobby so regularly - especially when everything "escalates" a bit. Because also you have a substantial share in the fact that the project "DMXControl" with all its upstream and downstream activities exists in such a way. Thank you.

Your DMXControl Team