More JCAPS Impressions

I haven't had much chance to post since starting my new position. Getting up to speed in my new role has kept me busy. I have been using JCAPS though and thought I'd post a quick update on my impressions.

Basically the good is still the good, but my team and I are experiencing more pain points, mostly due to the poor repository integrated into the tool. Here's a quick list of things I'd like to see improved.
  • I've gotten in the habit of diff'ing my changes against the repository version to ensure I'm only checking in changes I've intended. JCAPS does not allow you to do this. There's also no easy way to diff changes between different repository versions. You need to be creative, and go outside to tool for this functionality.
  • There's no easy way to find all the files you have checked out of the repository. You need to manually keep track of the files you've touched. I've become accustomed to relying on my development tools to keep track of this for me, so this is a pain.
  • We're having a hard time coming up with a good maintenance plan. The repository does offer tagging and branching, but these terms in a JCAPS repository seem to mean different things than they do in CVS. When you tag a set of files for a JCAPS release, there does not seem to be way to grab all these files as a single unit. In JCAPS, a tag is more of an informational item, like a comment. Branching seems to be more like CVS tagging and branching combined (versioning a set of files together and setting up an alternative development path). Missing is the ability to merge into the trunk.
  • Aside from the repository, we've been having problems with things as simple as generating javadocs from the the JCAPS Designer. Again, we're forced to go outside the tool to get this functionality.

The more I use JCAPS, the more my wish list for new features grows. I'm hoping the next version of JCAPS will address these problems, but I've been unable to find much information about the upcoming enhancements or a release date. At this point I'm finding JCAPS helpful for quickly laying the interface plumbing (connections to a DB, web service, queue, etc) between applications (or application components), but painful for almost everyhting else.

Comments

Unknown said…
Agreed, JCaps leaves much to be improved on. Very Kludgy product.
December 27, 2007 at 12:45 PM
Vinnie said…
Another JCAPS gripe....
No automated build script
January 2, 2008 at 1:01 PM
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