CM Basics - October 2006
http://www.cmcrossroads.c
om
CM Basics offers readers the answers to their configuration
management
"how-to" questions with tips from the experts,
real-life case studies,
product reviews and industry news coverage.
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This Issue Sponsored by:
- Build and Test Automation -- new from Electric Cloud
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- DevPlan from TechExcel – meeting the complexities of
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- Do Metrics Matter? 5 Essential IT Metrics for Success
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- If Information is Power, Surround SCM 5 Makes You Mighty
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In this Issue
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1. Ask Mr. Make: Tips and tricks from the automatic
dependency generation masters
3. Lightweight Code Review Episode 3: Pros and Cons of Four
Kinds of Code
4. Webcast: Knowledge-centric Application Lifecycle
Management – what you need to know
5. The CM Crossroads Blogzone
6. Enhancing CM Tools with Triggers
7. DevZone: Build and Release Management
8. Recent Discussion in the Forums: Issue vs Problem vs
Defect vs Change
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Tips and tricks from the automatic dependency generation
masters
by John Graham-Cumming
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Any project larger than a simple example faces a dependency
management problem. Dependencies must be generated and kept
up to date as engineers add to, modify and delete from the
project. And Make itself provides no tools for dealing with
this problem; all Make provides is a mechanism for
expressing the relationships between files with its familiar
target : prerequisite1 prerequisite2 ... syntax.
GNU Make's mixed dependency syntax
Even Make's dependency syntax is flawed because it
incorporates both 'foo.o must be updated if header.h,
system.h or foo.c are changed' and 'foo.o is the result of
compiling foo.c'. Thus, anything to the right of the : is a
prerequisite, but the first prerequisite where there's a
rule body (i.e. commands) is special: it's the prerequisite
that will be passed to the compiler (or other command) to
actually generate the target.
Read More >>
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7172/202/
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Sponsored By TechExcel, Inc.
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Lightweight Code Review Episode 3: Pros and Cons of Four
Kinds of Code
by Jason Cohen
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In Episode 2 we explained why the venerable Formal
Inspection technique isn't used in practice and why a
"lightweight" style of review might be useful. In
this Episode we explore the pros and cons of four other
common styles of code review and see which one is the most
promising candidate for effective but not time-consuming
practical peer code reviews.
Skinning Cats
There are many ways to skin a cat. I can think of four right
off the bat. There are also many ways to perform a peer
review, each with pros and cons. I hope this turns out to be
a bad analogy...
We've already explored why the tried-and-true Formal
Inspection method of code review doesn't work in practice.
Several other, simpler techniques suggest themselves as
alternatives:
Read more >>
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7171/202/
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CM Crossroads Webcast Series:
Knowledge-centric Application Lifecycle Management –
what you need to know
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While application development conjures up many thoughts, the
fundamental core lies in the knowledge gained and used
throughout the development process. From informal ideas
and feature requests, to formal specifications, design
documents, development plans, test cases, release notes,
and user documentation, Application Lifecycle Management
(ALM) is a knowledge-centric process. Historically,
however, development teams have managed these vast
repositories of knowledge in virtual silos, with each
functional group building their own knowledge isolated from
the team as a whole. In today’s competitive software
development environment, the silo-based models will no
longer support the ever-changing demands of large
distributed organizations.
[Sign Up for this Webcast]
http://www.c
mcrossroads.com/webcast/1807
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Prescribes Five Essential IT Metrics For Success"
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CM Blogzone:
Read the latest from the CM Crossroads bloggers
http://www.cmblogs.com
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Read the latest entries from:
Some Assembly Required by Mark Bools
The Long Road Ahead
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7164/230/
Zero day
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7168/230/
Day 1: Down to work...
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7174/230/
Configure This!by Carson Lucky
Chapter 3.1: The Master and the Note
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7179/230/
Practical Code Review by Jason Cohen
Why review code?
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7162/230/
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Enhancing CM Tools with Triggers
by Ben Weatherall
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There are two ways of enhancing CM tools: wrappers and
triggers. Wrappers "wrap" the execution of Command
Line calls or API calls, and triggers are invoked from
within the CM tools themselves via hooks or API calls.
Wrappers are "old school" and they work, but they
generally only block a command or to do post-command
processing. Triggers, since they are invoked from within the
tools themselves, allow a finer granularity - especially
when dealing with macro-level commands. The rest of this
article will concern itself only with triggers though the
general concepts will work for wrappers as well.
There are three basic types of triggers:
Read More >>
ht
tp://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/7170/202/
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=======================================
DevZone: Build and Release Management
=======================================
The New Build and Release Management Developer Zone has been
created in
conjuctionwith IBM Rational as an environment where people
can learn, collaborate,
and share ideas about strategies and techniques to achieve
build and release
excellence in their organizations. We hope you’ll become a
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Visit the Build and Release DevZone >>
http://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/blogsection/14/206/
===========================================
Recent Discussion in the Forums:
Issue vs Problem vs Defect vs Change
===========================================
Do you consider Issue Tracking, Defect Tracking, Problem
Reporting, and Change Request systems to be one and the
same? Are people just using different terminology or is
there a real difference?
One distinction I want to make up front is that I am not
talking about IT HelpDesk type solutions. While there are
similarities, I consider that a different animal with a
different purpose than one you would have for software
development and SCM (even if there could be a connection
between the two).
Or maybe everyone considers issues, defects, and problem
reports to be one and the same but change requests to be
different with a different life-cycle even though all
possibly result in a change. Change requests may be more
associated with functional changes rather than
"fixing" the software.
In this case, do you have one system or two? And if you have
one system, does it treat a problem different than a change
request as far as life-cycle or do they both have to fit in
the same "flow"?
Let me know what you think. Thanks.
Read More>>
http://w
ww.cmcrossroads.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,180/
topic,69340.0
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