Wednesday 1 June 2011

Linker? What's a linker?

For better or worse (mainly worse), I had to dip back into some "retro" development recently.

I'm talkin' 1998...

I'm talkin'...

I'm talkin'.... Visual Basic 6...

So wallowing in the fun that ensues from supporting 12 year old technology, a colleague asked about a particular build error spat out of the command line:
LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file xxxx.lib
and then, shortly after...
Linker? What's a linker?

Oh dear. I have been using the .Net CLR for way too long. It's been around for over 10 years now, and the idea of having to manually resolve external symbols, reallocate addresses and "bake" libraries into a single executable is now totally foreign.

Oh well, at least I can enjoy some sweet '98 tunes while I lament the loss of static linking...


FYI: a linker is like that and that's the way it is...


BDD?

Feature: Acceptance Testing
    In order to spend more time doing the things I enjoy
    As a developer
    I want to spend less time remembering to run a set of tedious manual tests


    Scenario: Feature Testing
        Given I have worked out how to test a new feature
        When I complete the new feature, passing the test
        Then I should be able to move on to something more interesting, safe in the knowledge the feature is tested, correct and complete



    Scenario: Regression Testing
        Given I have implemented a feature
        When I complete testing the first time
        Then I should never have to do it again, via dull tests for regressions