RE: Best practises for Configuration Management before build

[Arthur Barrett]

Paul,

> > I do not want the benefits of continuous integration to act as a
> > disincentive to commit early and often 
>
> I have still a different stance:  Never, ever discourage 
> someone from checking in their code

Erm... I thought that was *exactly* my point.  


> One successful implementation of this has been discussed at some  
> length in this forum.  Search the archives for "submit/assemble".   
> That particular method provides a means to accumulate good changes  
> (and back out bad changes) in a way that's repeatable with  
> reproducible results.
> 
> In my implementation, defect tracking was tightly integrated with  
> version control and the work flow.  

Tony and I and March Hare Software and lots of other people have put a
lot of effort and time into extended CVS to do these extra things for
people who need it.  Since 'traditional' users of CVS have no
desire/need for the overhead of these extra 'features' it got put in a
separate 'CVSNT' project.  

However recently I've been seeing anecdotal evidence that 1) many of the
people using CVSNT don't use or understand the extra capabilities, and
2) people who need/want those extra capabilities 're-invent the wheel'
rather than use CVSNT.  

It does make me wonder how effective the free software movement is if
noone looks for existing freely available source code before writing
their own solutions.

Can you offer any insight, from your own experience?

Regards,


Arthur