[Bioc-devel] Announcement: C++/Mavericks Best Practices guide posted

[Nathaniel Hayden]

Dear Bioc developers,

If you have not already seen the July Bioconductor newsletter, it is
worth taking a look, specifically the section about Mac OS X Mavericks
adoption: 
http://www.bioconductor.org/help/newsletters/2014_July/#new-mac-os-x-mavericks-build-machines

As you probably know, the recent adoption of the Mavericks platform by
Bioconductor has revealed many package breakages, due mostly to C/C++
code.

Dan and I have created a document that provides an excellent overview
of what the introduction of the Mavericks platform means for C/C++
package code, along with strategies and places to look when solving
Mavericks problems. A large part of the document is about C++ best
practices that dovetail nicely with the typical problems we have seen
in troubleshooting Mavericks packages.

Find the guide here: 
http://bioconductor.org/developers/how-to/mavericks-howto/

I focused on making the document eminently readable, with the goal of
equipping readers with the minimum technical information needed to
tackle Mavericks issues intelligently.

I have also expanded the content of the Debugging C/C++ code how-to
page, including a diagnose-a-crash example using the lldb debugger on
Mavericks: http://bioconductor.org/developers/how-to/c-debugging/

The last section of the C++/Mavericks Best Practices guide, which
details lessons learned from debugging efforts for other packages,
needs your help to grow! We would like to pool knowledge to make it as
easy as possible for everyone to troubleshoot their packages. Please
write to the bioc-devel list
(http://bioconductor.org/help/mailing-list/) with details about
lessons-learned and other insights you have had while troubleshooting
your package. We would love to hear about it!

If you have any general questions, suggestions, or comments about the
guide, please feel free to write the bioc-devel list.

Thanks,
Nate