At objective partner, we offer various community events for developers at regular intervals. These events focus on the practical side of things; they are not about lectures, but about developing, exchanging ideas and coding.
What is an abapGit BunKai?
For participants, the abapGit BunKai is about concentrating on pure coding, something that is often neglected in everyday life due to deadlines and time pressure.
The BunKai is a whole day dedicated to the basics of Git, branching, push and pull requests, contexts and best practices. We use different versions, suitable tools, frameworks, continuous testing, continuous collaboration and everything else that fits in with these topics.
The day is divided into different sessions, each with 45 minutes of programming and a 15-minute break for a short review, a cup of coffee and a briefing for the next session. The pairs are swapped in each session.
In the morning it's all about the basics, in the afternoon it gets a bit more complicated, because then we work on different, more challenging topics.
We concentrate not only on trying out new things, but also on deepening existing or new knowledge and putting it into practice.
Where does the word BunKAi come from?
The term BunKai describes a form of training from karate. There it is used to deal with the practical sense of the fighting actions and thus increases the skills of the karateka. At the abapGit BunKai, we will train and improve the participants' skills in using Git version control in ABAP projects in one day. Do a lot, listen a little.
Community Event Review abapGit BunKai - Weinheim 11.05.2019
We are proud to announce that on 11.05.2019 the first abapGit BunKai ever to have organized. This time Damir Majer was once again with us in Weinheim as an experienced agile trainer. In addition to Damir, Johannes Konings and Christian Günter, two abapGit developers, contributed their technical know-how on abapGit and Git to this event and also shared their best practices with us as trainers.
Some of the participants already had very good knowledge of abapGit, so that the abapGit newbies among the participants could benefit from this in the joint sessions. As the host, I also decided to take part in the sessions and was able to experience live that the trainers are very serious about their code reviews of the MergeRequests.
The abapGit BunKai agenda
The sessions were divided as follows:
- Connect to the system yourself, install abapGit and take your first steps with it
- Fork a third-party repository, modify the fork slightly and use abapGit features
- Using Git branches and tags
- Use Git for code reviews
- Possibilities with abapGit: CI/CD, abapLint, ...
All practical exercises were of course carried out in a pair-programming style to ensure the best possible transfer of know-how. This way of working enabled all participants to pass on their knowledge to the others and to receive targeted and quick answers to questions themselves.
Around the abapGit BunKai - discussions and exchange
The breaks and lunch were also used intensively to ask questions to the trainers. Among other things, we had interesting discussions about the ABAP RESTful Programming Model, abap in the cloud and continuous integration.
This slide by Sascha Junkert was presented in Session 5, among others, and generated a lot of discussion among the participants:
We had a great atmosphere at the event. It was exciting that the participants came from different areas, already use abapGit or want to use it after the event. The event was therefore a clear success from the host's perspective.
In the following interview, the 3 trainers Damir, Christian and Johannes as well as Andreas (participant) share their views on abapGt and abapGit BunKai:
- Damir Majer, SAP Solution Architect, Agile Developer, Majer Consulting & Training
- Christian Günter, Senior Software Engineer at emineo AG, Trainer
- Johannes Konings, SAP Development Engineer at the Haufe Group, Trainer
- Andreas Kopp, SAP Application Developer at OPTIMA packaging group GmbH
How did the idea for the AbapGit BunKai come about?
Damir: The idea of BunKai actually grew out of the ABAP Code Retreats.
Christian: Johannes approached me about two years ago at a code retreat with the idea of doing a similar format with abapGit. The idea then matured and when Damir, an experienced SAP community event organizer, came on board, it slowly but surely became more concrete.
Damir: We wanted to implement so-called "deep dive" formats. The first in this direction were 'SOLID in Action' and 'Legacy Code Retreat', which Christian Drumm and I had already held internally in companies. After Johannes and Sascha approached me at SITMUC 2018, it was clear that this would be the first community 'deep dive' format.
What is the difference to the Code Retreat?
Christian: The format and the process are very similar in principle.
Damir: At the Code Retreat, we focus primarily on clean code and various other topics such as ABAP in Eclipse, unit testing using ABAP Unit, TDD and practices from XP. The Bunkai formats primarily focus on one topic and this is dealt with in great depth (hence DEEP DIVE).
Johannes: Both events have one principle in common: learning through strong interaction!
Andreas, what was your motivation for taking part in the AbapGit BunKai?
Andreas: My motivation to participate in the AbapGit Bunkai was to gain more experience with Git in the ABAP environment. The ABAP environment is special compared to other development and runtime environments because, for example, only one active source code version can exist within an ABAP system and there is usually not one system available per developer. I am interested in how other ABAP developers use Git in their daily work, in particular whether a central Git repository is used, whether open source projects are used - or whether AbapGit is used locally purely as an archive application.
Do you often take part in such community events?
Andreas: I often take part in community events, including SAP Inside Tracks, code jams and a code retreat on test-driven development with ABAP.
What motivates you as a trainer to run the BunKai on a voluntary basis?
Johannes: An important topic needs to be driven forward 🙂
Damir: The ABAP Community formats are part of learning together and sharing knowledge. Software engineering is a very practical skill and, in my opinion, much easier to improve together. What motivates me personally is that I can share my "lessons learned" so that others can do better in the future.
Christian: And the fun of it 😉 I've been a big fan of SAP community formats for a long time and have benefited greatly from them. Getting involved with abapGit and the abapGit Bunkai is my way of giving something back. As a trainer, you also learn a lot at such events. True to the saying "he who teaches, learns twice".
How was the atmosphere at the BunKai? How did you like it?
Damir: The atmosphere at the bunkai was great and it is always a pleasure to come to Weinheim.
Johannes: I particularly liked the strong interest of the participants and the constant intensive exchange.
Christian: I also really enjoyed the bunkai. The participants were all very committed, motivated and eager to learn. I particularly liked the exchange between the participants. Everyone was able to learn something from everyone else. As "trainers", we also learned a lot of new things and shared our experiences.
Have the expectations you had of the first BunKai been fulfilled?
Christian: Absolutely. I didn't expect so many people to voluntarily spend the whole Saturday working with abapGit, and with a new format to boot. I was most concerned about the cloud systems. I was very pleasantly surprised that they worked smoothly all day.
Damir: My expectations were far exceeded, we went through a thorough preparation phase and this paid off at the event.
What would you do differently next time?
Christian: As it was the first event, we naturally have a very steep learning curve and can still improve many areas. The common thread running through the day and the topic was not recognizable the whole day, we explained some topics too superficially, which then caused confusion in the sessions. On the other hand, it is a non-commercial community event. It will never be perfect and there will always be room for improvement.
Johannes: That's right, next time we need to pay more attention to a common thread that links the exercises together.
Can you imagine coming to Weinheim again for a developer event?
Christian: Definitely. It was my second time in Weinheim and it's always worth the trip. objective partner is a great company and we really appreciate you making the first abapGit Bunkai and other events possible.
Damir: Yes, I would love to.
Johannes: Sure!
Andreas, did you already use AbapGit in your company before BunKai and if so, what exactly was it used for?
Andreas: I use AbapGit to download open source projects via GitHub and to return bug fixes or enhancements to the community. For example, we use the ABAP Logger and the ABAP Debugger Data View Extension as open source projects. Another use case is to export the current status of a package, e.g. before a major refactoring. In the future, I could also imagine using AbapGit to exchange source code between different SAP systems (e.g. an ERP and an S/4 test system).
What excites you about abapGit?
Johannes: That it combines the version management protocol "git", which is widely used outside the ABAP world, with ABAP and can therefore also be the basis for CI/CD or DevOps.
Christian: AbapGit makes it easy to collaborate and develop across systems. This was previously unknown in ABAP (apart from SAPLink, which was never really of any practical use to me). And that abapGit is the enabler for OpenSource in the SAP/ABAP world. In addition, you can of course also contribute your own ideas and constantly improve abapGit.
Damir: This means that ABAP developers in particular are finally no longer cut off from the cool stuff that other programming languages make possible. It's like a door opener to new worlds 😉
What specific advantages do you have by using AbapGit?
Andreas: It's easy to use and keep open source projects up to date with AbapGit and to participate in the community.
What impact do you think AbapGit will have on the future of SAP software and companies?
Damir: Personally, I believe that the topics that go in the direction of software diagnostics will increase. From logged pair programming sessions to formal code reviews that enable a completely different landscape and tool integration using ABAPGit. Sooner or later, the possible automations will support us, ABAP developers, immensely in checking software and providing clues to improve quality.
Johannes: With abapGit, a start was made on combining development processes (git, CI/CD) that have become established outside ABAP with ABAP. Anyone who wants to get more out of version management in the ABAP environment should take a look at abapGit. It is also an ideal way to exchange open source ABAP software (https://dotabap.org/).
Christian: I believe that abapGit will have a huge impact on the future of SAP software. On the one hand, you can see this from the fact that SAP itself relies on abapGit with ABAP in the cloud and is now also involved in the project. On the other hand, you can see that the user base is constantly growing. For example, abapGit has already permanently changed the way we develop at emineo AG.
Andreas: I believe that AbapGit is very important for the ABAP open source community, as it makes sharing code much easier and perhaps even motivates some ABAP developers to actively participate in the community.
AbapGit also remains exciting because it is integrated into the SCP ABAP Environment (ABAP PaaS) and APACK, another important building block for the use of dependent code, was only recently introduced.
Perhaps in the distant future, SAP will also make the source code from SAP S/4HANA available in GitHub so that every ABAP developer can fork it and post the changes as a pull request - instead of modifying or using enhancements. These developments could then be incorporated into the standard code (after approval by SAP) and rolled out to all SAP customers. There would also be a platform via GitHub where standard code could be publicly discussed and issues could be posted. This would also significantly increase transparency. You can still have dreams.
A review by Alexander Geppart, host of the abapGit BunKai at objective partner
