Getting the Most out of AccuRev’s Windows Explorer Integration

As organizations become more advanced in their use of software configuration managment (SCM) they typically expand its use to include more than the software developers.  A common addition is around audibility and compliance of the entire development process which may require them to version more than just the source code, but also any requirements, project plans, design artifacts and documentation.  This enables the labeling of the big picture of who, what, where, why and how the software was developed.

With this expansion there are now more users of the SCM tools, many of whom have never used a version control solution before. A few examples of these new user types may be hardware designers, graphic designers, product managers, or the documentation team. These types of users are working with different types of files, and work in different tools than the traditional software developers and because of that may use version control tools in different ways.  These users may have historically created versions of files using naming convention such as:

 ReleaseNotes_v1.doc, ReleaseNotes_v2.doc etc. all on their local computer.  

Obviously this can be an error prone process and also a single point of failure if something were to happen to that user’s computer.  Since many of the files they work on are binary (.doc, .pdf, .ai, .dwg, .vsd etc.) they may want to work on these files in a serial mode so they don’t have to try to manually merge them when someone else makes changes to them in parallel.  So instead of the traditional use of AccuRev, taking advantage of our parallel development features, these users may want to work in exclusively locked workspaces or at least have exclusive locks on certain files to protect them.

In order to make this new type of user successful they need to use an interface that is familiar to them. With many source code control tools they may have to write scripts, manage configurations or interact with a command line interface to be able to get their work done. This type of interaction will likely not work well for these types of users, as many of them may not have the technical know how to work in those environments.  AccuRev can make this transition much more fluid and familiar for these users with the AccuBridge for Windows Explorer. This interface gives the user access to the AccuRev commands needed from within the familiarity of Windows Explorer as seen in exhibit 1.

 

AccuBridge for Windows Explorer

 

Use Case: Fixing the Broken Build

by Rob Mohr, AccuRev

In one of many travels and customer visits, I came across a very cool way that AccuRev was helping to improve the way development teams do their work. To be more specific, this group was using Change Packages integrated with the JIRA Issue Tracking system to manage changes across their various product releases. They also used CruiseControl for continuous integration that would kick off nightly builds and notify the team with the results of the build.

From what they told me, the success of builds has significantly improved since they started using AccuRev because of the ability for the developers to work in their own private workspaces where they can integrate and unit test before promoting their changes for the rest of the team. Although broken builds are, for the most part, a thing of the past, they will still occur once in a while and need to be fixed ASAP.

Here is how they do it with AccuRev

The stream structure below is a simpler view of their overall software development process, but will be sufficient to show the use case.

Promoting to the Integration Stream

To start, the 4 developers below have made changes in their workspaces that will be promoted and associated to 4 different issues.

As you can see below, the integration stream (EntSoft_Client_Int) is “aware” of which issues are active in the stream. These are the new “change packages” introduced in the stream to be included in the next nightly build.

Build Fails in the Integration Stream

The next morning, the team is notified that last nights build failed via an email notification from CruiseControl. They have also scripted CruiseControl to automatically enable a time based stream called the “Temp_Fix_Build” stream and assign the appropriate transaction number to rollback the change packages from last night.

Assign the Developer to Fix the Build

One of the developers creates a workspace on the Temp_Fix_Build and “change palettes” over each change package one at a time.  This gives them the ability to mix and match change packages together to determine which one of them is the problem.

Problem Solved

After the culprit is fixed, the repaired change package(s) are promoted back into the integration stream for all to share.