Timeline for Structuring a "Large" Windows Forms Project and Solution To something with Multiple Sub-Projects
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 16, 2020 at 6:22 | comment | added | Doc Brown | Sounds to me, for this goal, you could avoid to have a "separate exe" - just make it possible to run the main application in two modes - a "viewer" mode and a "monitor&processing" mode. Of course, trying to entangle some things here is probably not wrong, but I would recommend only to clean up only the areas in code you need to touch to achieve your current goal. The canonical answer to these kind of questions is usually "get a copy of Feather's book 'Working effectively with legacy code'". | |
| Apr 15, 2020 at 22:19 | comment | added | GisMofx | @DocBrown Yes. The whole application has multiple forms. The "main" application runs as monitor and processes files as they appear in a folder. During that process it uses code in form2 to do some things like format the data and print it. Now, if the user wants views the processed data at a later date, they only need form 1. The main program does not expose direct access to the other form via the UI nor would any user just viewing data need access for form 1. | |
| Apr 15, 2020 at 17:02 | comment | added | Doc Brown | And why do you want this? Is there some benefit from the users perspective? | |
| Apr 15, 2020 at 11:42 | comment | added | GisMofx | @DocBrown my immediate goal to be able to compile a separate form to its own exe as it was updated. The "main" code uses the form as well, but it gets compiled into that main exe. | |
| Apr 15, 2020 at 8:03 | comment | added | Doc Brown | Do you have a clear goal, a reason why you actually need to change the code? Which new requirements have to be added? Are there bugs to fix? Is something working "too slow" from the users perspective? What strikes me in this question is that there is not one single word about these points - refactoring "just in case" is a doomed approach. | |
| Apr 15, 2020 at 7:24 | comment | added | Bart van Ingen Schenau | Does this answer your question? I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now? | |
| Apr 14, 2020 at 22:57 | comment | added | GisMofx | @Steve You raise a good point. Economics. That's what's stopping me from rewriting large portions of it. It's working as is, but I just need a way to get the separate EXEs, without too much fuss, the separate forms. I guess I'll take some small wins if I can. | |
| Apr 14, 2020 at 22:32 | comment | added | Steve | Consider, does the code need to be reorganised beyond the steps you've already taken to preserve its compilability and easy wins like separating classes into files? The overall folder structure is for you to determine in accordance with the conceptual structure of the program. If the code has been written very badly in the first place by a single author, then any code change may risk breakage, and there's no point bearing that risk and effort unless there is something to be gained from it. Not all code can necessarily be refactored safely and economically. | |
| Apr 14, 2020 at 21:50 | review | Close votes | |||
| May 3, 2020 at 3:01 | |||||
| Apr 14, 2020 at 21:29 | history | asked | GisMofx | CC BY-SA 4.0 |