Software Configuration Management - Tuesday lecture:

Developer centred SCM

Literature

• Mikkelsen & Pherigo, chapter 3 (in parts).
  Read this chapter as background material - focus on the concepts and principles related to the construction site metaphor.
• Kelly, chapters 5 & 7.
  A CI is a Configuration Item (the formal definition is given in chapter 7).
  Read chapter 5 to get the context in which we treat the library metaphor.
  Read chapter 7 as background material. Make sure that you understand:
  • the difference between what is and what is not a CI
  • the two-tier model - or is it three-tier?
• Asklund: chapter 2 & 5.
  Read these chapters. Make sure that you fully understand:
  • the different cases of distributed development
  • the examples of repository architectures
• White, chapter 10.
  Read this chapter - you might want to skip ClearCase-specific stuff. Focus on:
  • the three scenarios
  • the four technological solutions
  
  You might want to compare the concepts and principles described in the two papers above.

• Whitgift, chapter 6.
  Read this chapter. Make sure that you understand:
  • the system model concept and its purpose
  • the build process
  You might want to just browse through the more technical parts.
• Bays, chapter 4.
  Read this chapter as background material. Focus on the build process and the concept of reproducibility.
• Feiler: Configuration Management Models in Commercial Environments.
  Read this technical report. Make sure that you fully understand:
  • the main concepts of all four models
  Reflect on how long transactions relate to what you know about CVS from the lab exercises.
  Reflect on the strong and weak sides of the models.

Lecture summary:

• construction site, co-ordination and communication
• the study, workspaces and roles (work models?)
• the library, identification and structures (history?)

Quote of the day

Now the whole earth used only one language, with few words. On the occasion of a migration from the east, men discovered a plain in the land of Shinar, and settled there. Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, burning them well." So they used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower whose top shall reach the heavens (thus making a name for ourselves), so that we may not be scattered all over the earth." Then the Lord came down to look at the city and tower which human beings had built. The Lord said, "They are just one people and they all have the same language. If this is what they can do as a beginning, then nothing that they resolve to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there make such a babble of their language that they will not understand one another's speech." Thus the Lord dispersed them from there all over the earth, so that they had to stop building the city. (Book of Genesis, 11:1-8).