seabook
20th November 2003 16:45 UTC

CASE tools for NSIS
Hi guys,
My name is Ka Lun and I'm a member of the organizers team of the Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference 2004 (CUSEC 2004). For CUSEC 2004, we are trying to organize a software engineering competition involving maintenance of a software project. Currently, I'm looking for a suitable software project on the web (particularly on SourceForge) for use as competition material.

My problem is this: I would like to know what CASE tool(s), if any, you used in the development of NSIS. What I mean by CASE tools is everything including IDE (although not the most important), analysis/test/debug software, etc. Do you think that a Software Engineering student can learn to use the CASE tool(s) in a month? This is because beside telling what software project students will work on, we also need to tell them what CASE tools will be available at their disposal at the competition.

kichik
20th November 2003 17:49 UTC

NSIS development is done using Microsoft Visual C/C++ 6 as the IDE and the debugger and DebugView as a debugging tool. That's it, nothing too fancy :)

I'm sure every student can learn how to use MSVC6 and DebugView in a month.

Do you have a link to a document explaining this competition? If it is what I think it is and NSIS is chosen to be a part of it, I would sure love to meet the winner.

seabook
27th November 2003 22:43 UTC

CUSEC website
Hi kichik,
Our website is www.cusec.ca. The website's mostly finished, except for the competition section because we haven't chosen our project yet and I still need to write up the official rules. I'll try to get it done and updated before this weekend. But basically, students will participate in teams of up to 4 people. One month before the competition, we give them a package of source code and developer documentation, as well as tell them what software tools will be available for their use during the competition. So students will have one month to study the source code package and learn to use the forementioned software tools. They will be allowed to bring some printed pages of comments that they wrote up when studying the source code package and software tools (currently it is decided that 2 pages of comments will be allowed, 1 copy per team member). When they arrive at the competition, we give them a "wishlist" of quality improvements that they should implement. We give them 24 hours in front of the computer(s) (i.e. the 24 hours can be split among the 3 or 4 days of the conference. We still need to decide about that. I am confident students can stand working in front of the computer for 24 hours; afterall, I know a competition where the teams have only 1 days, that is 24 contiguous hours, to finish a project and the teams stayed up all night) Students will receive marks for correct solutions, bonus marks for extra improvements outside the wishlist. First, second, and third places are attributed according to the accumulated points of the teams.

BTW, if we choose to use the NSIS as competition material, we will need to remove all hints of version and build date as an anti-plagiarism measure (so that they don't just memorize code from newer source code packages available on the internet). Do you allow us to do that? We will keep the credits whereever they appear and just remove version number and stuff.

kichik
27th November 2003 23:25 UTC

If that's the case and NSIS is chosen, I would definitely want to meet the winner :)

You can remove the version numbers. You can basically do whatever you want as long as you don't claim you wrote it, don't claim we wrote something you wrote for it and keep the license and copyright notices along with the source code.

seabook
28th November 2003 04:20 UTC

Awesome. :)
That's awesome! :D
How would you like to meet the winner though? The competition will take place January in Montreal.

R@m00n
28th November 2003 15:50 UTC

This sounds great.
Will the results of the students be publised so that the improvements can be included in the "real" NSIS?

seabook
28th November 2003 18:03 UTC

The license doesn't seem to enforce that but I think students would love to see their work included so they can brag about it, like "Hey, I worked on NSIS too. This program you're installing is using NSIS. You shall bow before me, mwahahaha...". ;)

Still, at the end, it's the students' choice, if I interprete the zlib license correctly.

kichik
28th November 2003 18:23 UTC

Yes, that is correct. They are not obligated to release it under the zlib license.

seabook, I might be in the area that time. Please see my private message for more details.