Best Practices for Advanced Source Control Beyond CheckOut and CheckIn

1. Best Practices for Advanced Source ControlBeyond CheckOut and CheckIn Steven Wilssens Compuware .NET Consultant http://Steven.Wilssens.net

2. http://www.visug.be

3. Visual Studio User Group Belgium Community Meeting Point Evening Meetings Each Month, starting March 2006 3 parts: Round Table Formal practical covering Socializing part http://www.visug.be

4. Have you ever… Had a small part of the development team finishing a release, while the others were waiting Needed to support released versions Needed to develop multiple versions

5. Have you ever… Needed to prepare interim releases for testing Suffered from integration nightmares Suffered from source control contention

6. Goals After this session you will be able to: Identify different branching strategies Choose the appropriate branching strategy Increase overall product quality Increase overall process efficiency Apply the appropriate strategies with Team Foundation Source Control Start the implementation of continuousintegration

7. Content Branching strategies Branching terminology Reasons for branching Different branching strategies Guidelines on how to adopt the right branching strategy

8. Content Team Foundation Source Control Features How to implement a branching strategy Continuous integration SNAP

9. Branching Strategies

10. Contains: Entire source code Documentation files (optional) Anything else necessary to build and release a complete product (optional) It issequential and it only grows Branching TerminologyMainline/Trunk

11. Copy of another branch (or trunk) Taken at a certain time Contains new developments Grows independently of its parent Trunk is a special type of branch Branching TerminologyBranch

12. Merging Process of taking source files from one branch and applying them to another Branching TerminologyMerging

13. Moving changes from a child branch to the parent branch Branching TerminologyReverse Integration

14. Possible merge conflicts need to be solved on the Trunk Branching TerminologyReverse Integration

15. Build and unit/component/… test problems are discovered on the trunk! Branching TerminologyReverse Integration

16. Moving changes from a parent branch to a child branch Branching TerminologyForward Integration

17. Branching TerminologyEnd to End Scenario

18. Branching TerminologyEnd to End Scenario

19. Branching TerminologyEnd to End Scenario

20. Branching TerminologyEnd to End Scenario

21. Reasons for branching Primary reason for branching: If concurrent or parallel development must occur!

22. Reasons for branching Need to develop bugfixes/patches for a previous release(s) Need to support multiple released versions Need to develop multiple versions at the same time

23. Reasons for branching Need to prepare interim releases for testing Need to reduce source control contention Want your team to be productive during the testing phases of the SDLC

24. Branching Strategies

25. Branching Strategies Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. Albert Einstein

26. Branching Strategies

27. Branching StrategiesBranch by Release

28. Branching StrategiesBranch by Release

29. Branching StrategiesBranch by Release

30. Branching StrategiesBranch by Release

31. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Release Provides Series of successive baselines Common base for developers to use in making further changes to code Simple to use when only supporting 1 version Drawbacks Does not support long term parallel development (code chill phase) Added complexity and overhead to support of released versions Build-by-bug-number syndrome

32. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Release Build-by-bug-number syndrome Occurs when code gets checked in a branch after the release :-( Who? Release Engineer Assignment? Hand pick only the pinpointed fixes and all bits of code needed When? Usually at the worst time -> an emergency release

33. Branching Strategies

34. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose Decision to branch is based on the need to satisfy a specific purpose: Release of software and associated items Typically mark significant milestones: Release for Alpha testing Release for Beta testing Release to QA for system testing Release to production Service Release

35. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose

36. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose

37. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose

38. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose

39. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose

40. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose

41. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose

42. Branching StrategiesBranch-by-Purpose Drawbacks: More complex Code chill phase Advantages: Supports regular releases by design Supports emergency releases as required Avoids problems caused by build-by-bug-number syndrome Lets the developer work from the main branch

43. Branching Strategies

44. Branching StrategiesBridge

45. Branching StrategiesBridge Proceed with enhancements not intended for the release currently in progress Solution: Creation of bridge line Apply the enhancements Merge the bridge line back down into the main development line after the release candidate releases

46. Branching StrategiesBridge

47. Branching StrategiesBridge

48. Branching StrategiesBridge

49. Branching StrategiesBridge Lets multiple teams work on multiple subprojects in parallel Allows developers to modify code without impacting other developments

50. Branching Strategies