REUSE/Ada

One promising approach to improving software productivity is reuse in all phases of the software development process. Despite the promises o.freusability at various levels, reuse will never achieve its real potential until resources become available that assist software developers in locating. interfacing, and applying reusable resources in a productive, reliable, and convenient manner. This paper describes the constn~ction o.f two resources that provide software developers convenient means in locating, interfacing, and applying reusable software resources. One tool is a client conjigurable source code development environment that supports and encourages software reuse. The second is a web based approach that is currently under constn~ction. Although the systems described in this paper are targeted towards Ada, the approach applies to C++ and other languages with similar packaging capabilities. 1. Introduction Reuse at all levels in the software development process offers much promise in improving software productivity. However there appear to be two major obstacles to software reuse. One of these problems is the "not invented hear" attitude. The cavalier attitude that software built elsewhere by others is just not as good as software we construct. The second problem is the lack of integrated tools that assist software developers in locating, analyzing, and interfacing reusable resources. The first problem, a matter of attitudes and work processes, is beyond the scope ofthis paper. The second is a matter of tools that assist software developers in productively applying reusable resources. It is difficult to convince software developers of the potential productivity increases of software reuse when they do not have tools available to assist them in locating, analyzing and interfacing to reusable resources. This paper describes two systems that are part of our USE/ Ada, University for Scranton Environment for Ada, project. The first system is a code support system, called REUSE/ Ada, Reuse Enhanced University of Scranton Environment for Ada, that was originally constructed to work under Window 3. 1 in 211