SCM dimensions

While the concept of SCM is widely recognized, its limits, its logic, its priorities, are not clearly defined or agreed upon.
ClearCase best supports a point of view based on dependency management. This is a bottom-up approach, whose primary focus is to control the generation of dependencies between the various configuration items.

A first classification of the various configuration items identifies some of them in different configurations as versions of the same entities.
For this distinction to be effective, it is required that at most one version of any such entity may figure in any software configuration.
These entities (encompassing several versions) must then be given an identity (more on this with the concept of winkin).

A next distinction parts derived objects from source objects. Source objects will be named from now on, following the ClearCase terminology, elements. Dealing with them is the concern of Version Control.

Dealing with derived objects is the concern of Build Management.

Both Version Control and Build Management rely on the assumption that the identity of the objects they control can be preserved during the development. Insuring this in practice is the focus of Workspace Management.

The coordination of the work of many developers is implemented by maintaining a common baseline, and defining the tasks and the achievements by reference to it. This is the area of Change Management.


SCM function ToC
Marc Girod
Last modified: Tue Sep 5 12:39:13 EETDST 2000