1. Software Quality @SOLEIL
Tango Meeting - May 2011
N. Leclercq on behalf of the SOLEIL Computing Team

2. The facts SOLEIL project started in Feb. 2002 We went fast!
Goal of Phase 1: CS for (linac) + booster + SR + 10 beamlines
First beam stored in Mid. 2005
10 beamlines officially opened in 2007
26 beamlines by the end of 2012
We went fast!
everything was developed under pressure...
... with moving specifications

3. The facts SOLEIL computing team Tango was an emerging technology
12 people for both machine & beamlines
9 developers: 50% C++ / 50% Java
heterogeneous programming skills
(let’s forget the subcontractors management)
Tango was an emerging technology
started with version 2.x (IDL v.2) !
no async calls, no events, ...

4. The Consequences Impact on Software Quality
heterogenous implementations: 1 approach per developer!
heterogeneous tools: STL, boost, ACE, ...
unadapted designs
no tools to manage software production (no time for that)
(a lot of) bugs!
>>>> too many time spent on existing software! <<<<

5. So...
We need to enhance the overall quality of existing software and to avoid to propagate «mistakes» in new developments...
Deploy quality «tools» at each stage of the software development process
compilation, versioning, dependencies management, packaging, deployment, ...
code analysis, crash reporting, ...
Factorize knowledge, best programming practices (at team level)
documents (howto, wiki, ...) & documentations (API)
libraries (general programming tools, DAQ abstraction, ...)

6. Current Status Batch compilation, dependencies, packaging...
solution based on: maven + jenkins + nexus + sonar
batch compilation of our +400 projects
Java & C++ (for both Windows & Linux)
versioning
compilation of the latest release (CVS/SVN tag)
packaging

7. Current Status Batch compilation, dependencies, packaging...
dependencies management
allow to detect impact of any interface change in the underlying APIs
automatic developer notification (compilation broken)
statical code analysis
in production for Java projects, work in progress C++ (plugins evaluation)
feedback on Java: very useful information (no noise)

8. Current Status Batch compilation, dependencies, packaging...
unit testing
for the moment, only a few Java projects integrate unit testing
packaging
system builds ready to deploy binary package for our 2 platforms
we (re)deploy everything at each shutdown!

9. Current Status Batch compilation, dependencies, packaging...
so... what’s the added value for us...
ease developer life:
«mvn [clean] install» to compile any project!
no more dependencies nightmares (auto downloaded)
binary coherency at CS system level
no «forgotten software/binary black box»

10. Current Status Batch compilation, dependencies, packaging...
so... what’s the added value for us...
ease developer life:
«mvn [clean] install» to compile any project!
no more dependencies nightmares (auto downloaded)
binary coherency at CS system level
no «forgotten software/binary black box»

11. Current Status Designs & Programming tools...
we already generalized usage of common libraries
DAQ (ASL, DSL, ...), Yat & Yat4Tango, Maths tools,...
we are generalizing «proven designs»
designs known to produce stable & efficient devices
prohibit usage of some tools!
no boost! no ACE! no «this super framework I found on the net», ...
any piece of software can be potentially maintained by any team member

12. Current Status Crash Reporting any C++ device now embeds «breakpad»
we analyze the dumps after each run and extract some statistics
20% of the devices cause 80% of the crashes
we fixed approx. 20 low occurrence crashes (after 1 run with breakpad)
we identified problems in Tango itself (partilly fixed in 7.2.6)
we can now detect regressions
we know which devices are problematic, we can «classify» them and select which ones should be uppermost fixed

13. Conclusion (kind of)
A humble advice to new projects: «invest» in quality tools from day one!

14. ?