Let's face it, nowadays going from version 7.0 to version 8.0 means working with a dispersed team of developers who aren't necessarily located in the same corner of the building - if the same corner of the world.

Software development and configuration management are often conducted by professionals in locations distributed about a larger virtual environment.  In fact, the Gartner Group estimates that by 2008, 41 million corporate employees worldwide will work virtually at least one day per week. 

The most basic rule of GNU Make and the environment is that any variable set in the environment when GNU Make is started will be available as a GNU Make macro inside the Makefile.

Many people think that to large companies Configuration Management is seen solely as a technical role and as a cost burden to the company. The following article explains however some of the financial aspects of the role. These are examples that have occurred during my role as Configuration Manager in several companies. In these roles I have been much
more than just a technician.

We are on the brink of a massive shift in CM, both philosophically and technologically. Our abilities and our means must undergo a change in how we operate and how we are perceived. The changes are incredibly exciting and offer enormous opportunity for the discipline. We're being backed against the wall in many organizations but we can be climbing on top of the wall like Berliner's at Check Point Charlie when the wall fell, moving our CM nation to a much better place.