This lecture gives an overview of the various activity of software configuration management - one of the most important aspects of successful software development according to many. Software changes constantly from the very instant it is born until it eventually dies. We have to cope with these changes in a disciplined and safe manner to ensure the quality of our products. Furthermore, software becomes ever bigger involving large teams of programmers who have to co-operate and be co-ordinated to ensure low costs, short development times and high quality.

We are presenting two different ways to look at software configuration management. The first one is top-down, which is the traditional way of looking af configuration management and which caters to the needs of management in a project. The second way is bottom-up and is driven by the programmers' daily needs to get their work done, but still carry it out in a disciplined manner.

Finally we show two metaphors that can help in getting a better understanding of the mechanisms of configuration management. The metaphors are two common-day situations that illustrates many of the important aspects of (software) configuration management.

Time: Wednesday 21/2, 14.30-16.30

Place: Aula attrezzata

Lecturer: Lars Bendix

Handouts in pdf-format.

Further reading: Ambriola and Cignoni: Laboratorio di programmazione, Jackson Libri, 1996: 2.3-4, 2.5.2-3, 3.3-4, 4.4-5

Additional literature:

• DeRemer, Frank & Kron, Hans H.: Programming-in-the-Large Versus Programming-in-the-Small, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. SE-2, No. 2, June 1976.
• Feldman, Stuart I.: Make - A Program for Maintaining Computer Programs, Software - Practice and Experience, Vol. 9, April 1979.
• Parnas, D. L.: On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 15, No. 12, December 1972.
• Rochkind, Marc J.: The Source Code Control System, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. SE-1, No. 4, December 1975.
• Tichy, Walter F.: RCS - A System for Version Control, Software - Practice and Experience, Vol. 15 (7), July 1985.
• Ambriola, Vincenzo & Bendix, Lars & Ciancarini, Paolo: The Evolution of Configuration Management and Version Control, Software Engineering Journal, Volume 5, Number 6, November 1990.
• Babich, Wayne A.: Software Configuration Management - Coordination for Team Productivity, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1986.
• Berliner, Brian: CVS II: Parallelizing Software Development, in proceedings of USENIX Winter 1990, Washington D.C.
• Bersoff, Edward H. & Henderson, Vilas D. & Siegel, Stanley G.: Software Configuration Management: An Investment in Product Integrity, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1980.
• Brooks, Frederick P. Jr.: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1975.
• Brooks, Frederick P. Jr.: No Silver Bullet - Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering, IEEE Computer, April 1987.