Book Image

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice

Book Image

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice

Overview of this book

Why is Software Configuration Management important?Software Configuration Management (SCM) is the discipline of managing the building and modification of software through techniques including source-code control, revision control, object-build tracking, and release construction. SCM involves identifying the configuration of the software at given points in time, systematically controlling changes to the configuration, and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration throughout the software development lifecycle.Software Configuration Management is one of the first skills a serious developer should master, after becoming proficient with his or her development tools of choice. Unfortunately, this does not always happen because the subject of SCM is not commonly taught in either academic or company training.When developing software, you need to have a manageable team development effort, track and maintain the history of your projects, sustain parallel development on multiple product versions, fix bugs, and release service packs while further developing the application. This is where the concepts of Software Configuration Management come into play; SCM is about getting the job done safer, faster, and better.Visual SourceSafe has a long history behind it. The previous versions were either loved for their ease of use and integration with other Microsoft products, or hated because the headaches caused by using them improperly. This book will help you to avoid such problems.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

About the Reviewers

Alin Constantin graduated from the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers of the Politehnica University of Bucharest in 1997. He worked at Crinsoft S.R.L., developing hotel management and user interface automation software. Then in 1999 he joined Microsoft. For almost 7 years he focused on developing Visual SourceSafe and source control integration in Visual Studio.

Dragos Brezoi started programming to create an application for processing and adding extra effects to his guitar's sound. Several years later, he got a Masters Degree in Computer Science from the Politehnica University of Bucharest, and is now researching for a Ph.D. in Advanced Automatics. Dragos worked for several years in the industrial automation field as a programmer for PLC and DSP programming to SCADA, OPC, and DCS solutions. Dragos co-authored GDI+ Custom Controls with Visual C# 2005 (Packt Publishing, 2006), and he currently works for Motorola TTPCom Product Group (Denmark), developing a next-generation embedded software framework.

Jean-Baptiste Lab discovered computers at the age of 12, when he started writing demos in assembly to impress his friends. After a scientific-oriented basic education, he obtained a B.Sc. in Computer Science at Portsmouth University, UK in 1998, and went on to achieve an M.Sc. in Mathematics and Computing at the University of Besancon, France. Expatriated in Denmark, Jean-Baptiste has been working in the mobile phone industry since 2001, touching various fields spanning from GSM Protocol Stack simulation to software architecture, build systems, and configuration management.