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Mark, The recommendations of the developers of CVSNT for QA process, including change sets and promotion are a part of the eBook: http://march-hare.com/cvsnt/features/book/ For a CM process to be effective is must ensure the integrity of the project/appliccation, make the evolution of that project more manageable and the interrelationships clear. http://march-hare.com/cvspro/faq/faq9.asp#9dd Success at this will be different for differing companies due to cultural differences and management goals. It is my opinion that implementing someone else's successful CM implementation almost certainly dooms you to failure. March Hare Software also offer CM process design to support customers, there are many companies with an excellent track record of this. CVSNT has change sets (bug numbers) that are ideal for grouping changes together and linking changes to jobs/defects. We use a combination of branches and promotion levels (a specific type of branch) to structure the development, test and release cycle. Finally, I strongly recommend that you design your CM process in a non-tool centric fashion. The old saying goes "when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail". Design your CM process (business focused) and then ask "what tools can implement this process", or "how would I implement this process in CVSNT"? Regards, Arthur Barrett -----Original Message----- From: cvsnt-bounces at cvsnt.org [mailto:cvsnt-bounces at cvsnt.org] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:01 AM To: cvsnt Subject: [cvsnt] managing development/testing/release process 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 _______________________________________________ cvsnt mailing list cvsnt at cvsnt.org http://www.cvsnt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cvsnt cvsnt downloads at march-hare.com https://www.march-hare.com/cvspro/en.asp#downcvs @CVSNT on Twitter CVSNT on Facebook