The ACME Project Assembling Configuration Management Environments (for Software Development) by Brad Appleton

About ACME

The purpose of the ACME project is to gather together successfully used "best practices" and "lessons learned" for software configuration management (SCM), as well as other useful information about SCM.

Why ACME?

Why did I choose the name ACME? Because that's where Wiley E. Coyote gets all his nifty contraptions to help him catch the Roadrunner. "What?", you say that doesn't make sense? Then look here for further explanation.

® Wiley E. Coyote is a registered trademark of Warner Bros.

About SCM

SCM Books & Papers

There a number of good publications about SCM. See some of my favorite SCM books and papers, along with some recommendations on which ones to read for your particular area of SCM interest.

SCM Resources on the WWW

There are a number of great web resources on SCM. I happen to keep a set of links to my favorite SCM webpages.

SCM Best Practices

• SCM Patterns
• Agile SCM
• Branching Best Practices
• Build Reproduction Best Practices
• Workspace (development "sandbox") Best Practices
• ClearCase Practices

Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration

Effective software configuration management (SCM) strategies promote a healthy, team-oriented culture that produces better software. SCM Patterns alleviates software engineers' most common concerns about software configuration management's perceived rigidity and an overemphasis on process. Through the use of patterns, a properly managed workflow can avert delays, morale problems, and cost overruns. The patterns approach illustrates how SCM can be easily and successfully applied in small- to mid-size organizations. By learning how these patterns relate to each other, readers can avoid common mistakes that too often result in frustrated developers and reduced productivity.

Key coverage includes how to:

• Develop the next version of a product while fixing problems with the current one.
• Develop code in parallel with other developers and join up with the current state of codeline.
• Use current tools more effectively, and decide when to use a manual process.
• Build and foster a development environment focused on producing optimal teamwork and quality products.

Agile SCM

• Agile Configuration Management Environments

  A powerpoint presentation given to the Chicago Software Process Improvement Network (C-SPIN) in March 2004

• Agile Software CM/ALM Articles at CMCrossroads

  This used to be a regular monthly column in the CM Journal by myself, Steve Berczuk and Rob Cowham dedicated to the application of agile principles and techniques to SCM and SCM for agile projects. It has since grown into a collection of many articles from many different authors on topics that lie in the intersection of CM, ALM, Agile and Lean development methods (including DevOps).

• SCM Patterns for Agile Architectures

  This is a presentation I gave at the 2006 Dr. Dobbs Architecture and Design World Conference (AD2006) July 17-20 in Chicago, Illinois. It proposes a 4+2 Views model of SCM/ALM architecture and presents SCM patterns for each of the main views, including subject areas of branching (codelines), integration/build, promotion models & levels, and variability management.

• SCM Patterns for Agility website

Branching Best Practices

• Streamed Lines: Branching Patterns for Parallel Software Development

  (432KB, split up into 10 HTML files)
  A set of approximately 50 patterns and pattern variants (and a dozen traps/pitfalls) regarding the use of branching in software version control tools to facilitate parallel development. An earlier revision of this paper appears in the Proceedings of the 5th Annual Conference on Pattern Languages of Program Design (PLoP'98).

Build Reproduction Best Practices

• Software Reconstruction: Patterns for Reproducing Software Builds

  (initial draft)
  A set of approximately 10 patterns (and growing) to help reproduce software builds. Submitted to the 6th Annual Conference on Pattern Languages of Program Design (PLoP'99).

Workspace (development "sandbox") Best Practices

ClearCase Best Practices

• Selecting The Right Branching Solution: Techniques, Strategies And Trade-offs

  This is a powerpoint presentation Darryl Hahn and I gave at the 2003 Rational User's Conference (RUC2003) held in Orlando, FL, August 2003. It builds upon several of the practices in the RUC2000 presentation, and adds a few others, and then shows 4 different approaches that mix+match the practices together in various ways and the rationale + trade-offs for each overall approach.

• ClearCase Branching and Labeling Best Practices for Parallel Development

  This is a powerpoint presentation I gave at the 2000 Rational User's Conference (RUC2000) held in Philadelphia, PA, August 2000

• Common ClearCase Practices: Best Practices, Traps, and Pitfalls

  An attempt to compile a comprehensive list of commonly used best-practices for using ClearCase. These have all been described at different times by different people or groups either on the ClearCase user's mailing list, or in some other SCM-related forum during the past five years or so.

Feedback on SCM Best Practices

Please email us your comments and feedback!

There is an SCM patterns mailing list devoted to discussion of these and other patterns of recurring SCM best practices. Here, people from different SCM backgrounds and tool environments can share their experience with their success and failure of various SCM strategies and tactics employed.

We want your and feedback, and encourage you to use the SCM patterns mailing list to contribute your comments. The types of comments we are especially interested in are:

"Me too" stories and "War" stories!

If you have seen or used any of these patterns of practice or their variations we want to hear about it. Or if youve suffered from one or more of the pitfalls, we want to hear about that too! Tell us your experience. What seemed to be beneficial/detrimental about using the pattern/pitfall? What difficulties did it raise? What insight can you share that will give us a better idea about the context in which the pattern seems to work (and when it doesnt) or how to recover from the pitfall and prevent it's recurrence?

Your own real world examples!

Using various SCM tools, we'd like to hear real-life examples from real practitioners working on real projects that describe the tool-specific details of how the pattern was implemented in your particular environment. We hope to gather a variety of implementation examples using a variety of different SCM tools. If you have such an example and are able to share it with us, we urge you to tell us about it!

Other common solutions!

Do you solve the same problem in a different fashion? Is their something about your tool, team, or environment that makes an alternative solution more appropriate for you? If so, let us know!

Improving clarity and usefulness

If you have an idea for how we can state something more clearly or concisely, or use a better name for a pattern or trap/pitfall, please let your voice be heard. Anything that will help prospective readers to better understand and apply (and when not to apply) these patterns is very important to us!

Technical corrections/additions

If you think some of the things we say are technically incorrect or inaccurate, or that we missed something important, by all means please let us know.

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