In organisations where you have large numbers of applications, written in a myriad of languages running on innumerable platforms and databases how do folks manage the release of builds and patches, particularly when some of the releases are 3rd party? I know there a whole bunch of "Release Management" applications out there, but I'd be i...
Hi, I am given a responsibility in my project to develop a Equipment tracking tool with following requirements New Equipment can be added by admin to a particular user Once equipment is assigned to a person he will a request to accept the request so he will be responsible User can transfer his equipment to other users. At the same tim...
I am wondering what is best practice when it comes to dependencies and how releases should be done. In my case I have a library that relies on log4net and I am wondering if I should distribute log4net.dll (set the log4net reference to copy local) along with the release? Could I simply state that log4net should be installed in the GAC? ...
What are release notes for and who reads them? Should/could they be automated by just spitting out bugfixes for the current release, or do they warrant careful human editing? So, anybody with a link to best practices(reasoning behind) in regards to software release notes? ...
Backstory I'm on Rails 2.1 and need to freeze the Capistrano gem to my vendor folder (as my host has broken their cap gem dependencies and I want to make myself as independent as possible). On my local windows machine I've put the following my environment.rb config.gem "capistrano", :version => "2.5.2" config.gem "net-ssh", :lib => "n...
It seems very easy to deploy new reports to a reporting server directly from visual studio, however when these are to be pushed into our web farm (where developers have no access), this either needs to be done manually, report by report, through microsoft's web front end, or into an MSI. However, from time to time we might want to recon...
On the topic of Release Management, I'm investigating my options for software that will essentially perform the features WSUS offers as far as I'm aware (remote installation, version querying, per-machine/group settings, etc) but for my custom software. It also needs to be able to run third-party executables (e.g. a graphics driver insta...
What's your prefered method to name your software releases? Like Microsoft: alpha - beta - final - service pack... Like Google: gmail beta - beta - beta - beta - :) Like some softwares: 0.2 - 0.3 - 0.9999... ...
I think it's better to release the version of the software which your developers actually tested; I therefore tend to delete the 'debug' target from the project/makefile, so that there's only one version that can be built (and tested, and debugged, and released). For a similar reason, I don't use 'assertions' (see also http://stackoverf...
Not long ago we were using Microsoft VSS as our version control tool, and used to create branch of our code after the end of every release and deploy that to our clients. Now we have moved to SVN and lately there have been lot of discussion about tags/branches, should we tag/branch our code after development for a particular release? S...
I have a system in production that has several servers in serveral roles. I would like to test a new app server by deploying to that specific server, without having to redeploy to every server in production. Is there a way to ask Capistrano to deploy to a specific server? Ideally I'd like to be able to run something like cap SERVER=app2...
Hi, I am interested to know if the terms alpha, beta and RC1 are terms that are used throughout the software industry or just MS. What are the definitions? Malcolm ...
What is the best approach to releasing a new version of a hosted web app, and how often do you typically release? Do you pick an arbitrary date, say every week, month, etc. to rollout an accumulated set of fixes (perhaps using an approach similar to Joel's approach to ship dates)? Waiting much longer than that seems to defeat part of the...
What would you generally recommend for software developement? Which combination do you use or would you recommend? I assume that tools are needed for Version control, issues/bugs/task, Release management, Requirement management. Tools for Test management and Project management should be accounted for as well, I guess. Did I forget anythi...
I've always deployed my web applications via FTP (sometimes even xcopy), and then manually run database scripts myself. I started deploying this way in the 90's, but lately, I've seen a few web apps with installers. I'm starting to question, if I'm locked into an out dated process. I'm a consultant, my apps are usually internal, so ...
From my experience, one of the bigger problems we come across during our webdevelopment process is keeping different setups updated and secure across different servers. My company has it's own CMS which is currently installed across 100+ servers. At the moment, we use a hack-ish FTP-based approach, combined with upgrade scripts at spec...
We have a pretty cool little web framework that we have used successfully on dozens of client projects. We are planning to release this software to the community. However, I am wringing my hands about what should/should-not go on a new open source software project page. What are the things the site must have? Docs? A Wiki? A link to down...
I've heard of companies issuing 'gold disks' to developers, ie the shipped dvd sprayed gold and mounted in a frame with a metal plaque underneath. I think Microsoft used to give everyone who worked on the project a copy of the box which was finally shipped (so the more boxes on the book case the longer someone had worked there). Problem ...
When I look in the SVN log I really wish I could see markers that tell me when releases were done. I've seen this in other version control systems such as PVCS and Perforce. Can this be done in SVN? I've done a little bit of research and so far it looks like this sort of thing is not supported. Edit We don't want to have to copy our s...
I have config files and various documents that I want to copy from the dev environment to the (dev) server directory in Maven2. Strangely, Maven does not seem strong at this task. Options: Simple use a copy task in Maven <copy file="src/main/resources/config.properties" tofile="${project.server.config}/config.properties"/> Use the ...