[cvsnt] managing development/testing/release process

Mark Johnson amarkjohnson at gmail.com
Tue Jan 17 00:00:54 GMT 2006


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I am looking for some help, suggestions, discussion regarding the
general Development/Testing/Release process as it relates to cvs, and
branches and/or tags.  I am being asked by my QA department to
implement a process, and what I would like to do is design something
based on convention and best practices, rather than just dive in and
create a mess.  I don't expect anyone to say "here...do this", but I
would appreciate suggestions, and especially direction to good
resources on the subject.

We currently develop in the main trunk, and run both continuous
builds, and periodically QA builds out of the main trunk.  We branch
when we release a version (or at least create a branch tag) to allow
modifications for future patches to occur on the branch, while also
allowing development for the next version to continue on the main. 
This works well as long as the group is small enough, and it stays
simple.  We are starting to outgrow this.

We would like something more like this:
Developer(s) for a defined change set start with current "approved"
code base, and make changes, committing them back into the repository,
but in such a way that they are identified as not part of the approved
code base.  This branch or label set would need to be able to be
retrieved and built.  When the specific change set is ready, it would
be prompted to QA, where it can be tested (integrated with the
approved code base, but isolated from other changes-in-progress), and
if successful, prompted to the "approved" state, and now part of the
approved code base.  This would need to account for multiple scenarios
like this running concurrently, without interfering with each other.

I realize this can possibly be accomplished with branches and/or
different sets of labels.  What I am looking for is the simplest
approach which can be easily understood and followed by development,
QA, and of course configuration management (me).

I realize this is not a small question, but anyone willing to offer
feedback, or point me to an appropriate thread or book would be
appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark Johnson



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