GAT : StarterKit Pattern

Hello,

Making guidance packages GAT (Guidance Automation toolkit) is also making knowledge available for novice users regarding certain processes or technology. This entry I will discuss a typical scenario of how you can make an example application available through GAT in Visual Studio 2008.

Driving forces
You want to make a working example of how a typical Winforms application is made in your organization available for your developers. The developers must be able to run it , learn from it and make changes to it if they want to.

Solution
Use the GAT to make a Guidance package that unfolds the “Starterkit” application. Install the Guidance Package on the developers machine to make the Guidance Package available in Visual Studio 2008. The developer can choose the Starterkit from the Visual Studio 2008 new project–dialog to create the example application.

Structure

Attention

• GAT template for making Guidance Packages should be stripped to bare minimum before proceeding with own package creation
• References to assemblies, must exist on target machine (GAC or same folder : Hintpath !!!)
  

Alternatives

• Installed example application a demo box
• Example application in SourceSafe
• Setup package (msi) of the application with all the sources
• “Pure” VS2005 templates solution

Best regards,

Alexander