Archive for category Plain Old Blog
Conversations and workshops
Posted by Mark in Body of Knowledge, CMCrossroads, General, ITSLM, Plain Old Blog, Principia Notifications, Tools 'n' Tips on December 10, 2010
I have, for some time, considered the possibilities of the Internet for the real-time exchange of ideas around the lifecycle management subject (config, change, release, problem, and project management, among others). In particular I have been pondering how to start a useful dialogue about the Lifecycle Management Body of Knowledge. I suspect that one of [...]
Keeping configuration separate in ANT
Posted by Mark in ANT, Build Management, Plain Old Blog on October 21, 2010
Actually, this advice holds for any software system, but in this article I am focussing on ANT. One often sees, in ANT scripts, something like this at the head of the build.xml file. So far, so good. The author of this ANT script has thought to define properties that control the script’s behaviour at the [...]
Back on the writing treadmill
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Plain Old Blog, Subversion on October 18, 2010
Well, after a break to work with a client for the past nine months I am back on the writing treadmill determined to complete two projects before 2010 rolls over into 2011. First, complete the Subversion Guru training course. There’s been a lot of interest but most people are deferring the buy option until the [...]
Is Perl an essential skill of SCMers
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Glue Software, PERL, Plain Old Blog, Tools 'n' Tips on September 21, 2010
Is being able to use Perl an essential skill for people working at the technical coal face of software configuration management? The obvious, and probably correct, answer is ‘probably not essential‘ but if you work in software configuration management it is well worth considering. Perl is fairly ubiquitous, there are few platforms that do not [...]
Which SCM tool?
Posted by Mark in Business Cases, CMCrossroads, General, Plain Old Blog, Process on September 8, 2010
This is one of the most common questions asked on the CMCrossroads forums, and perhaps one of the most pointless. The question is variously stated as, “which is the best tool?”, “is tool X better than tool Y?”, or “we are looking for the best tool to X”. All such questions are equally vacuous. The [...]
When is a change a change?
Posted by Mark in Build Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, Plain Old Blog, Software Configuration Management, Version Control on June 12, 2010
A change can be viewed in two ways; conceptually or literally. What I mean by this distinction is that when I say the requested change is to “correct spelling mistakes in the poem” I am specifying conceptually what the change is to achieve (and after the fact, what the change achieved). On the other hand [...]
Absence, CM Tool, identities, and some thoughts on the future of CM
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Configuration Management, ITSLM, Plain Old Blog, SCM Tool on April 7, 2010
Some of you may have noticed a bit of an hiatus in my posts. I’ve been a bit under the weather, feeling lethargic and run down, and not in a good frame of mind for writing. Lucky you, I am in the mood now. Remember a few posts back I mentioned working on a CMS [...]
Revision histories with more than one root
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Plain Old Blog on March 18, 2010
Most of the time when we deal with revision history we are dealing with a directed acyclic graph with a single root. Most item revision histories develop from a single starting revision, as illustrated below. If two items belonging to different revision histories are combined we produce a graph with more than one root, as [...]
Items have history
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Configuration Management, Plain Old Blog, SCM Tool, Software Configuration Management, Version Control on March 17, 2010
As those of you who have been following this blog for any time will know I am currently looking in some detail at parallel development, specifically how it can be managed safely by non-expert version managers. I have used parallel development with much success on many projects but codifying my knowledge into a tool is [...]
Preventing ticket ping-pong
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Plain Old Blog, Process, Tools 'n' Tips on February 27, 2010
This is the first opportunity I have had for a while to put something on this blog — busy, busy, busy. (I can tell you that I am building up a fairly sizeable backlog of articles on parallel development and I will, I promise, get round to publishing them soon.) In the meanwhile, here’s a [...]
