11 Jul 2007 ianclatworthy   » (Master)

Wanted: Rock Solid Version Control

In earlier posts, I outlined the top 6 criteria that teams ought to consider when investigating and selecting a VCS tool: reliability, adaptability, usability, extensibility, integration and low administration. I’ve just announced the availability of Bazaar 0.18 Release Candidate 1 so now seems a great time to discuss my most important criteria - reliability.

In terms of impact on team success, tools are pretty low in the pecking order of things when compared to clear leadership, motivated people and just right processes. However, the new breed of version control tools are exciting precisely because they change the software development game: they enable new ways of communicating and that in turn enables new ways of thinking about software development. But outside the AlphaGeeks, Distributed Version Control will only reach criteria mass as a technology across the open source world and in commercial software development shops if we can show the technology is ultra-reliable. To me, that means 3 things: Design for Reliability, extensive test suites and strong auditing, e.g. cryptographic signing of commits.

(more…)

Syndicated 2007-07-11 01:54:11 from Agile Teams, Open Software, Passionate Users

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