Software Configuration Management Patterns:Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration
By Stephen P. Berczuk, Brad Appleton.
After working as Clearcase admin as an additional responsibility for 4-5 months way back in my career and then experienced using Sablime for number of years and then used open source tool like SourceJammer, it was my attempt to catch up which new things are developing in SCM area and how tools are providing built in support for process management. This book served as good reference.
SCM practices taken as whole define how an organization builds and release products and identifies and track changes. SCM comprises factors such as configuration identification, configuration control, status accounting, review, build management, process management and teamwork. In software context, we define pattern as something that “describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice”. This book describes SCM in terms of patterns -
Codeline Related Patterns and Workspace Related Patterns. Each of the Codeline Patterns - Mainline, Active Development Line, Private Versions, Release Line, Release-Prep Codeline, Task Branch and CodeLine Policy are described in detail as separate chapters. Similarly, the Workspace Related patterns are identified as - Private Workspace, Repository, Private System Build, Integration Build, Third Party Codeline, Task Level Commit, Smoke Test, Unit Test and Regression Tests. The book does describes some day-to-day problems encountered in dealing with SCM tools and Practices.
In the end, the book gives information about various online SCM resources like CM Today, CM crossroads, ucmCentral and SEI. The book also has comparative description of tools which support SCM patterns like VSS,CVS, Perforce, Bitkeeper, AccuRev, Clearcase, CM Synergy, StarTeam, PVCS Dimensions, PVCS Version Manager and MKS Integrity etc.
