Version Control

Brad Appleton, Robert Cowham, and Steve Berczuk continue to explore the role of build and deployment in configuration management. While the details may change from year to year as technology evolves, the underlying principles remain the same. Regarding building, we are going to take the opportunity to provide a guide to some of our previous articles that still hold true.

Years ago, I learned of commercial tools that automated builds and deployments by executing a combination of command line instructions and scripts. At the time, I questioned the value that these tools could provide. Even though the tools were promoted for build and deployment automation, they did not generate the command line instructions and scripts to actually build and deploy applications. The new tools did not replace existing build tools like Ant and make. Instead, the tools required that their users provide the build and deployment scripts. Surely, I could create one top-level script to build my application and another top-level script to deploy it. Why would I need a commercial framework to run my build and deployment commands and scripts?

A variety of agile software development methods and practices have now been around for a solid ten years and existed for at least another ten years prior. Configuration management (CM) for agile development has now been discussed since the turn of the century. So what are the core principles of CM and how can CM help agile teams?

For many people, Agile software development congers up the thought of "undisciplined" software development. The reality is that using an Agile approach to its greatest benefit requires discipline in a variety of ways.  None is more critical than the discipline of software configuration management. Agile teams are generally small, but their SCM needs are big.