In this blog we will look at how to use PureCM in the process of fixing a bug in a live release. As a developer will probably already be working on 'the next release' it is important that switching to a previous release (to fix a bug) is as uncomplicated as possible. PureCM provides the mechanism for a developer to work on a fix for an old version, and create a new release, without affecting his current development environment – or have his current development environment affect the bug fix environment (parallel development) … So how does it work? Raise the task The first stage... [More]

We've seen how developers can work with both tasks (for small work items) and features (for larger work items). This blog will look at how code reviews can be achieved using features. Why Reviews? As a developer completes all the tasks required for a feature, without code review, the option to 'Complete' on the feature is used. Submitting the resulting changeset would merge the feature into the parent Version immediately, close the feature, and stop any code changes from being merged into the feature (from the parent Version). This means that the developer's code is added to the main (parent... [More]

Up to now, the blogs have focused on a manager's point of view of using PureCM's project features. This blog will focus on a developer's perspective. Where developers work .. The workspace is (always) where developers work. This is a local copy of a version, feature or release where the developer can perform day to day operations using features such as Checkout or Submit. By having a local copy of files and folders the developer can work independently of other developers, and choose when to either integrate others' changes, or when to submit their changes. A developer can have multiple wor... [More]

PureCM currently uses its own database which has developed over the years to become a robust, secure, and flexible solution for most customer needs. There has been demand, however, from customers (existing and potential) to provide the capability to work with more established and well known SQL databases. We plan to have the option for customers to select from many of the most popular variants, but initially we will develop a SQLite solution followed shortly by SQL Server. SQLite will become the default database type, but the option for PureCM's native database will still be there. So fo... [More]

With the 2009-1 release of PureCM, comes the option of “Light Workspaces”.. The main purpose of Light workspaces was to enable workspace rebasing (see previous blog ‘Towards Rebasing’ October 2008). Currently, each ‘Full’ workspace has a workspace database that contains revision, checkout and file information about the workspace. This is obviously useful information to have, but makes workspaces large and time consuming to recreate. To enable rebasing, we needed to minimise the size of the workspace database. This has been achieved, to the extent... [More]

Following on from Tim Rutter’s article ‘Better Merging – Part 1’, we have looked at how to improve the merging capability of the tool even further by introducing Merge Paths and a Merging perspective for the 2009-1 release (see Stephen Worthington’s blog on perspectives – ‘PureCM gets a complete makeover’). This is especially useful if you have a staging hierarchy, eg. Development, QA, Release. In such a situation, pushing changes to the next level becomes very transparent. There are many benefits from introducing these merging features, here a... [More]