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Development Life Cycle

The figure below illustrates the PFLOTRAN development lifecycle where an idea is designed, encoded, and released to the community after being peer reviewed, tested and documented:

../_images/software_development_life_cycle.png

  • Idea: formulation of a new, enhance or increasingly optimized feature to be implemented.

  • Design: development of technical specifications for the new feature.

  • Coding: programming the feature in the source code and provisioning regression and unit tests.

  • Peer Review: responding to feedback from the developer and user community.

  • Testing: ensuring feature accuracy through validation and verification.

  • Documentation: describing the feature’s implementation and instructing on its use.

  • Release: distributing the feature to the community.

Linkage to Quality Assurance and Configuration Management

Idea and Design

Developers document and discuss concepts, theories, and implementation plans through workflows convenient to the immediate developer community. Inclusion of experienced developers better ensures compatibility, minimizing the need to refactor code during the Peer Review stage.

Coding

Prior to implementation, developers receive training regarding best practices for software development. Developers then encode process models and supporting software infrastructure according to the implementation plan. They create unit and regression tests that cover the new sections of code to preserve the capability as implemented.

Peer Review

Fellow developers review the proposed changes to ensure conformity with programming standards and existing software design and workflow. The iterative process of development and review continues until convergence, at which point, the modifications are accepted and merged with the main code.

Testing

Verification and/or validation tests are implemented to confirm the accuracy of the implemented process model.

Documentation

Documentation is updated with information regarding the design, implementation and use of the new process model and/or software infrastructure.

Release

Peer Review, Testing, and Documentation are confirmed by Senior Developers, and the new capability is released to the user community.

Retirement

PFLOTRAN is an open source code that is freely available online. Anyone may download, utilize and modify the code in conformity with software licensing. However, when the time comes that PFLOTRAN is no longer being actively developed, an email will be posted to the user mailing list publicizing the retirement of the code. An auto-reply message will respond to all submitted user emails indicating the same. A notice of retirement will be committed to all user documentation, including the PFLOTRAN version banner at the top of the screen output. Push privileges to the main online repository will be revoked for all developers.