Re: Configuration Management for Ada on Unix

["James A. Squire" <m193884@CSEHP3.MDC.COM>]

Jim Kingdon wrote:

> > To me, one of the aspects of a CM product should be that one of the many
> > objects it operates on is called "baseline" - and this should be a
> > separate construct apart from branches or labels or whatever.  It's
> > cleaner and safer.
>
> If I recall correctly, last time the term "baseline" was discussed on
> comp.software.config-mgmt, people could not agree on what it meant.
> So I'm not sure that using that word would decrease confusion rather
> than increasing it.

I can cure that - bring Software Quality into the project, and terms
like "baseline" will get defined REAL fast, either at gunpoint or
voluntarily.  Admittedly there are different kinds of baselines and what
some of those nuances are is often up for grabs, though it has more to
do with "when" you do them than with "what" goes in them.

Actually, there is another way to clear up the confusion.  Imagine what
you would need to do to reproduce something if it got accidentally
deleted in its entirety.  All of a sudden you become motivated real
quick to figure out exactly what a baseline is and what it should
contain.

The fact that a small group of people could not agree on what something
means does not diminish the importance of that "something", nor does it
make tools like sccs, rcs, et. al. qualify as configuration management
tools.
--
James Squire
MDA Avionics Tools & Processes
ja_squire@csehp3.mdc.com
Opinions expressed here are my own and NOT my company's
"one of these days I'm going to better myself by going to Knight school"
"You'll be a web knight instead of a web page!"