[mdlug] Seeking best practice documentation for "dual-track" development

[Carl T. Miller]

Robert Meier wrote:
> Summary:
> I'm looking for some internet or book documentation for
> a best current practice in software development.
> The usage of the documentation is primarily for citation in
> management presentations.
>
> The particular aspect sought is what used to be called 'dual-track
> development (by AT&T, RCA, ...) and I suspect might now be called
> 'continuous development'.
>
> What is the current buzzword?
>   dual-track development? continuous development? ???
> Where can I find a best practices description?

I don't know the buzzword, but I've heard of this type of
system.  Currently we have development, staging and production
servers.  Programmers can do whatever they want on the dev
servers.  When a team leader decides a particular version is
good, it is copied from CVS to the staging server.  At this
point the QA team verifies that everything is right.  If so,
it is passed on to production and checked by QA again.  We
currently use CVS, but will switch to subversion soon, since
it better handles multiple branches.

We are also preparing to start an automatic build system,
which is key to what you mentioned.  Every hour the repository
is checked for a new version.  If it finds one, it builds the
new version automatically.  This allows programmers to see
the results of new code within an hour and prevents the situation
where a design flaw isn't discovered until several days after
new code is based on the flaw.  This requires very little
maintenance, since programmers do not have write access to
the build server and no operators need to take time to compile
code.  The programmers use the code repository to update or
rollback the code.

Try searching for "development staging production auto build"
and see if that snags something good.

Incidentally, I'd love to see what you come up with, if you
are able to share your findings.

c