in reply to Team Development

In response to your question about the best development environment , many of the replies to this thread recommend CVS. This is a good thing, CVS is a very good version control system.

But you should be aware that this is only part of the pie: version control is not the same thing as a development environment (read: configuration management).

From the 'version management with CVS':

CVSNT can do a lot of things for you, but it does not try to be everything for everyone.

CVS is not:

  • a build system.
  • a substitute for management.
  • a change control or bug tracking system
  • an automated testing suite
  • a process model

    I just want to make the point that version control is only part of configuration management. Adopting a could versioning system will help you a lot, I agree, but there are still some crucial issues to address.

    How will you handle bug reports/fixes/prioritisation? Deployment? Release management? Communication? Spec and code reviews? These issues are as relevant here as how you version your code.

    Finally, if you are looking at CVS, I recommend also taking a long look at Subversion . It aims to address many features absent from CVS (dir, meta-data, atomic operations), but retaining the CVS model and interface.

    • In Section Meditations