Posts Tagged ‘version control’

Quick Guide to Mercurial for svn Users

Posted on July, 9 at 9:31 am | Filed Under CM, Python

Ned Batchelder has put together a quick guide to mercurial basic commands for subversion folks who are part of the move from a centralized version control tool like subversion to mercurial, a distributed version control system.  You can read it here. Mercurial (and other dvcs tools like git and bzr) seems to be gathering steam [...]

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What Makes Managing Component Based Development Hard?

Posted on December, 8 at 5:39 am | Filed Under Jython, Python, Software

I’m looking for input on where the management problems are for building large scale applications with reusable components. Reusable software components are a pretty established development pattern and are used across the software development language landscape.  Lately, this area has experienced a boon of growth as component development became married with service oriented architecture and [...]

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A Mistake to Use Open Source Version Control Tools?

Posted on October, 1 at 6:58 pm | Filed Under CM

I’m noticing that software shops from small mom and pop IS organizations to large Independent Software Vendors continue to adopt open source tools for version control and configuration management.  I wonder if this is a mistake. Open source communities are very different from most software shops that write code for pay.  While the open source [...]

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How much extra does Changeset Version Control cost developers?

Posted on September, 23 at 9:07 am | Filed Under CM

I have written before about the benefit of advanced configuration management using change sets, namely that it gives you a clear understanding of what is in a build of your software and allows you to control that at a higher level than just individual file versions.  The problem some developers face though, is that those [...]

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Real World Configuration Management Snafu

Posted on September, 8 at 9:43 am | Filed Under Asus eee, CM

The Piehead News wonders what a configuration management system is and if java programmers care about that short of thing.  That is a great question.  Most software engineers / programmers see the value of a version control system, because it lets them edit their code base with others without too much fear of loosing their [...]

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Advanced Version Control Software with Change Sets

Posted on September, 3 at 1:52 pm | Filed Under CM, Collaboration

Following a track back from my post “Is Branching the Answer?“, I found this article on an Accurev blog that largely agreed with my misgivings about using branches in version management software to manage the flow of changes through an organization’s development process.  The post mentioned that like Telelogic Synergy, Accurev also follows a change [...]

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Google Insights for Search tells the future for Configuration Management Systems

Posted on August, 29 at 6:35 pm | Filed Under CM, Software

I’ve been playing with Google’s new Insights for Search tool and it is a very compelling tool.  It allows you to view the Google searching user base’s interest in search terms over time and by geography.  This is an incredibly useful tool for judging how interested people are in ideas. Avinash Kaushik over at Occam’s [...]

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Is branching the answer? There is a better way…

Posted on August, 28 at 10:10 am | Filed Under CM, Collaboration, Software

Well, what is the question first. Here it is: How do I promote code changes through a team to release Version control tools since almost the beginning have supported some sort of branching scheme. We did this to allow concurrent changes to files without content loss. This was needed as soon as teams of software [...]

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New Directions in Version Control

Posted on July, 19 at 11:26 am | Filed Under CM

There are two trends that have emerged over the last few years that have had a significant impact on the version control tool space. In the past we’ve seen major shifts as version control tools went from small file oriented versioning systems like SCCS and RCS to tools that more easily managed a complete source [...]

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Real World Configuration Management Snafu

Posted on July, 17 at 8:49 am | Filed Under CM, Software

Here is a short example of what happens when Configuration Management goes wrong. bunnie’s blog is detailing the manufacturing arrangements in china for Chumby. Along the way the author has gained a new respect for the high level of skills evident in the Chinese manufacturing sector and hopefully a new appreciation for configuration management. After [...]

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Version Control Repository Conversion Tools

Posted on June, 29 at 2:24 pm | Filed Under CM, Software

There are a few tools available that assist in converting historical information from one repository format to another.  The most common supported conversions are between CVS and Subversion to the distributed VCS tools.  The most feature complete of these is Tailor, although it struggles with mapping data from less capable repositories like CVS and subversion [...]

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Git for Computer Scientists

Posted on June, 29 at 2:23 pm | Filed Under CM, Software

Here is a quick paper on GIT internals that explains its object storage, history and merges in terms of a Directed Acyclic Graph.

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Merges Shouldn’t be Scary

Posted on June, 19 at 3:58 pm | Filed Under CM, Software

Mark Shuttleworth continues his series of posts on version control tools by pointing out that it is the time to accomplish a merge that is crucial, not how easy it is to create a branch.  This is an extremely important point and in my experience a place where many tools and even developers break down.  Mark [...]

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Distributed VCS Performance

Posted on June, 14 at 4:14 pm | Filed Under CM

The whole pull for using a distributed version control system (VCS) is that it scales much better.  With a centralized VCS there will be an inevitable point where the performance drops due to either server or network limitations.  Investing in high end servers, network infrastructure and optimized tools can push that point out a fair [...]

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