Applying ISO Procedures to code changes

Question

I'm looking for a way to enforce ISO standards on developer code checkins. This boils down to auditing each change to the codebase so that I can tell:

• who made the change
• when the change was made
• what project the change related to
• what work item the change related to

We're doing .Net development using Subversion for source control and TeamCity as our CI Server. Ideally I'd like tools to manage the enforcement of these policies so that devs don't have to think about it.

Does anyone have any experience of enforcing this kind of tracking either with CI/Gated Check-In or just with policies and procedures?

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with the specific ISO standards, but you really should have all of the tools you need if you are following a decent development process.

Subversion and integration with your bug tracker (if it exists) should handle all of this. Subversion will keep track of who made the change and when. Every project should be in its own repository with its own bug tracker, taking care of that. The work item in this situation is typically going to be a source file or configuration file - Subversion should also track this.

In terms of tools, you can use Subversion to enforce a check-in comment. You might be able to get fancy and enforce a template using regular expressions, although I wouldn't recommend it - there's going to be edge cases where your template won't fit the needs of the developer and will just hinder progress.

Policies and developer discipline will go a long way here. Audit your commit logs regularly, have change control boards to approve changes before they are assigned to a developer, and track bugs from submission, assignment, patch, and testing.