Re: Control tagging of labels Test, QA and Production?

[Philippe Casgrain]

> "Jim.Hyslop" <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Andy Jones [mailto:address@hidden wrote:
        > > Allow me to suggest a simpler alternative.
        > > 
        > > Developers do not book code into CVS until it is ready to be 
        > > promoted to QA.
        > Pardon me for being blunt, but this is a Really Bad Idea. This 
encourages
        > people to leave code out of the repository for weeks or even months 
on end.
        > There are many nasty side effects to this practise, including the 
risk of
        > losing code if your hard drive fails, and increasing the difficulty 
and
        > amount of time it takes to integrate code once the code is ready to be
        > checked in.

Why wouldn't the developers use a branch within the same CVS repository? We 
have a formal "inspection" process before anything gets committed to the main 
branch (HEAD), which is the one built on a nightly basis and what is released 
to QA.

        > CVS works best when you check in frequently, and update your code 
from the
        > repository frequently. By frequently, I mean at least once a day.

Agreed. I check-in to my branch very often, usually after I have written an 
interesting piece of code.

        > > Presumably you would not want code included 
        > > in the automatic build unless the developers had completed 
        > > it, so your "test" tag works fine as it is.
        > There's a difference between completing code, and having the code 
ready to
        > be reviewed by QA. It also depends on the purpose of your daily build 
- our
        > daily build, for example, always uses the head of the trunk, and is
        > primarily used as a sanity check to make sure nobody broke the build.

Our QAs don't see code, they see the compiled product, but the means to this 
end is the same: QA sees the head of the trunk, developers use branches and 
there is a formal gateway between those. Whenever developers release to QA, we 
formally tag the repository so we know what QA got at that point in time.

Philippe