May 18, 2001

Topic Index:

• TrueCM Catching On
• Solaris Support Added
• TrueCM Release 0.90
• CM Concept: Time Safe Version Control
• Newsletter Subscriptions

TrueCM Catching On

Up to now, I have not been looking for customers. I wanted a few to get some feedback and allow time to react to any problems they might find. I certainly did not want to get ahead of what I could support. But the number has risen steadily. I've also started getting queries from non-HP, non-Agilent folks, though I've avoided advertising so far. All that will change as I wrap up the details on what I'm going to call Release 1.0 in the next month or two.

Once Release 1.0 is completed, I'll begin in earnest two efforts:

1. Getting the word out.
2. Next round of features.

If you have thoughts or suggestions on either topic, we'd like to hear from you.

Solaris Support Added

TrueCM has added support for Solaris on SPARC platforms. The Solaris platform, like HP-UX and Linux, supports the TrueCM Server and command-line clients, import of RCS and SoftBench CM files, and interoperability with servers and clients running on other platforms.

New TrueCM Release

TrueCM Release 0.90 has now been posted. Release 0.90 represents a significant advance over the initial TrueCM release just eight months ago. Release 0.90 incorporates customer feedback and functionality advances that make TrueCM a solid choice for advanced version control of your products. Key improvements include:

• Dramatically improved GUI usability
• Graphical diff and merge support
• Better performance
• More documentation, including on-line help for dialogs and browser windows
• RCS and SoftBench CM to TrueCM migration tool and documentation
• Significant automated test suite for increased product stability
• Lots of little things taken care of so you don't have to

CM Concept: Time Safe Version Control

The Time Safe concept deals with the immutability of the past. It is concerned with questions like: Will what I check out today for yesterday's release match what I got yesterday, and will it match what I will get next month or next year? Put another way, what assurance do I have that what I check out in the future for a given release will match what I am getting today for that release?

This seems fairly straightforward. After all, isn't reproducing previous release source a major feature of version control? Haven't tools provided this capability for a long time? As you learn about time-safeness and examine your tools, you may be surprised.

First, let's probe a bit more deeply by exploring how RCS fails to be time safe. My intention is not to blast RCS, but rather to illustrate the problem. Take the simple command:

co -rTAG file,v

This checks out the revision of file marked by the tag 'TAG'. Tags are commonly used to mark releases for later retrieval. But is the value of TAG versioned? No. Any user who can change the value of tag for any file in a release can break time safeness for the release. What about check out by date? This seems safe, right? But several subtleties are lurking in the shadows. For example, can anyone obsolete the revision referenced by the date? If so, the file is not time safe. Can anyone change the default branch within an RCS file? If so, the file is not time safe. Even such gross actions as directly editing the RCS files, or renaming or replacing RCS files with new ones break time safeness.

RCS and SoftBench CM users have long understood that changing the name or directory of a file or removing a file would break previous releases. This is another way time-safeness is compromised. More subtle is how changing the way keywords are substituted or changing the I/O mode of a file (for Windows) can affect retrieved file content. Changing any of these attributes affects time-safeness. RCS is particularly bad as the ONLY attribute which is versioned is the file content. Changes to names, directories, keyword substitution, I/O mode (for Windows), etc, affect ALL revisions of the file.

As you can see, RCS is far from being time safe. Even when well managed, opportunities abound for breaking time safeness in RCS. Time-safeness is hard. In fact, I know of no CM tool today that provides a completely time-safe solution. In fact, it probably isn't possible. But it is possible to do much better than RCS. And TrueCM does.

In TrueCM, a snapshot captures the complete state of a system (file content, names, directories, I/O modes, keyword mode, unix mode and existence of all files). That state cannot be altered except through that snapshot (or via direct file/database access -- you do need to control that too). In this way, TrueCM controls most of the variables for you. By freezing a snapshot and implementing appropriate access control on that snapshot, you can be reasonably assured that what you save today will remain as you saved it into the future. Diligence together with solid tool support provides the means to know that your releases will be safe.

Your feedback on the time-safe concept is welcomed. Send to support@truebluesoftware.com.

Newsletter Subscriptions

To be added or removed from the True Blue Software News mailing list, send your request to support@truebluesoftware.com.

View previous newsletter. View next newsletter.