Re: powerful editors versus IDEs (was: License to Steal)

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

In a real CM system, even if you add no comments in the process of a check
out/in, it at least maintains a record of what was changed and when & the
delta between the two versions. Comments in a banner are notoriously
unreliable and nothing forces them to be updated when a change is made. I
used to regularly ignore the pleas of some of my cohorts to update the
banners on the grounds that I had already explained my changes in the CM
system and didn't want to do it twice. If they wanted the *real* history of
a module, they could get it in a cocaine heartbeat from the CM system with
very nearly zero effort. I wasn't about to update banners with duplicate and
likely unreliable info just because "that's the way we've always done it!"

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Marc A. Criley" <mcqada@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3B0263B5.FB21A304@earthlink.net...
> I've tried for many years on different projects to push the project's
> coding "header" standard away from maintaining CM information--with
> mixed results.  CM tools are powerful enough that, when properly
> integrated into a well thought out CM process, a full and useful change
> history of the unit can now be easily extracted from such tools.
>
> I hate maintaining redundant information in a header, but many people
> (managers and developers alike) don't trust the CM environment, don't
> want to be bothered with having to learn a few simple procedures with
> the tool, and/or want all the change information in the file and are
> willing to accept the risk of incompleteness and inaccuracy.  (For the
> latter desire, auto-generation of headers has sometimes proved a
> workable compromise.)
>
> Marc A. Criley
> Senior Staff Engineer
> Quadrus Corporation
> www.quadruscorp.com