How Do You Find the Right Tool for the Right Job ?

Arthur B. asks: "Whenever I try to find a software product, I find myself browsing SourceForge, but it's really hard to find something, when I only know the features I want and not the name of the project. It's hard, once I find a software, to gather information about it's reliability (is it a huge collaborative OSS project, an IT giant driven project or an end of term student project). The same is true about package trees in Linux distros. I'd like to ask the crowd: Where do you pick your software (be it commercial or not)? How do you compare different products? How do you know what a software does exactly before using it? Does a website provide this kind of help? Please let me know your tips and tricks."

Re:Great Question.

[nes11]

Yeah, but unfortunately that's not always the case. For instance our current solution is a pretty nice program, but it has a horrible site that I would've passed off at first glance. And I would hate to put together an analysis of the best packages for us and then leave off programX that one of the bosses heard about somewhere.

Trove & use cases

[MarkusQ]

That's one reason I wish more projects would categorize themselves in the trove software map or something similar. It typically only takes a minute or two, and it's a nice break from coding (or something to do while you wait for a compile).

For that matter, writing up a few use-cases can help clarify your thinking, and posting them can help people find your project and decide if they want to use it. The problem with screen shots (which seem to be much more common) is that they aren't searchable.

--MarkusQ

That's why Google's USENET search is useful.

[Richard Steiner]

Otherwise known as Google Groups, or formerly known as DejaNews.

If a piece of hardware or software has been released and used by more than a few people, the chances are quite good that someone has discussed that item or piece of software somewhere on USENET over the past ten years.

Re:Freshmeat

[toddbu]

But don't stop there. Type the name of the package into Google and look at the number of results that come back. Browse the results and see how many of these are requests for help. Check the answers to see if they make sense, which means that there are knowledgeable people willing to help. Finally, check the date/time stamps to find current queries.

Re:Freshmeat

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some F/OSS projects where you can't decipher by looking at the project homepage if the code is still being actively developed or maintained, or will even compile cleanly. Google wont always help you with that.

I usually check out the changelog, web based view of the VCS (also because I don't run code written by morons) and finally public mailing list archives.

Note to everyone: It's very important that documents and news/status updates are dated **SIGH**