Re: Configuration Management for Ada on Unix

[dweller@dfw.net (David Weller)]

In article <31B5E734.2582@csehp3.mdc.com>,
James A. Squire <m193884@CSEHP3.MDC.COM> wrote:
>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.


Hmm, there's a lot of suppositions here.  And this has been hashed out
MANY times by people who do CM as their profession (I don't think
denigrating them as "a small group of people" who couldn't agree on
something helps matters).  

This has been a very intersting conversation, and one that merits
further discussion on comp.software.config-mgmt.  Much to my
disappointment, I had tried to get this thread crossposted to c.l.a
and c.s.c-m, only to find that each group wanted to stay within their
own newsgroup, effectively reducing some very useful
cross-pollination.

I have set followups to c.s.c-m, and have crossposted this message to
that newsgroup.  This entire thread now has very little to do with Ada
and much to do what definitions like "baseline" are and whether
certain CM tools can or cannot support it.

ObOpinion:  CVS _does_ support baselines as well as branches.  We do
it all the time. :-)





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