Topic: Building PHP applications, what belongs to who and more...

[cs.punk]

I am curious to know, if your asked to create a PHP 'application'. What 'things?' do you do for future modification, that might not include you?

Do you leave any read-me files that explains how the application works or?..

What happens if your asked to implement some small modifications to a rather complicated and not-so-organized application. Do you try to start making sense of everything by going from file to file reading its code? What a waste of valuable time?

What usually happens?

Now, secondly. If you provide a client with a PHP application. Do you OWN the application and the client is just a user of it? What is usually requested?

 

[thorpe]

I usually use a few different tools to maintain my applications. Of course this wasn't (and still isn't) always the case, but, in an ideal world I would.....

Document all specs from clients 'feature requests' as structure, behavior & interaction diagrams using UML.

Document all classes using phpDocumentor.

Ensure the entire development process is tracked via an issue tracker (I use atlassians Jira), and all work is commented and committed into version tracking software such as subversion.

All unit tests are maintained within the same repository and supplied with the application.

This is basically how I work at work, though often outside of my day job, things are more rushed.

Who owns what depends on what is written into the contract, but generally, clients own the rights build upon the software I write for them. They can manipulate it however they like, they just can't resell it.