RE: revision/version numbers

[Paul Sander]

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>address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden wrote:
>> Labels are not immutable; they can be moved around.  Some 
>> shops deliberately
>> use floating labels, e.g. to identify the latest sources 
>> eligible for build.
>Then the label should clearly indicate it's the "latest version". A version
>handed off to QA is not the latest version, and should have a unique label.

Depends on the process.  Oftentimes simply identifying the directory
containing the build is sufficient, particularly when it's early in the
development cycle.

>> This cuts down on clutter under several methodologies.  Under 
>> such conditions,
>> pulling from a specific (floating) label may NOT pull the 
>> expected code.
>> (Note also that if every build is labelled explicitly, it 
>> doesn't take long
>> before there are literally thousands of labels applied to 
>> files
>So don't label every build. You label the *important* builds - the ones that
>you may need to reproduce exactly later. Such as the ones you hand off to
>QA.

No anticipatory process is 100% accurate.  Plans change, sometimes after
the process begins.  This is not to say that a label could not be created
after a build completes, it may just be that it's not built into the
process.  In any case, it may not be a requirement to be able to reproduce
every build sent to QA; it may be a requirement to be able to reproduce
only those builds that are shipped to customers, for example.

>> Also, it may be that the Q/A department uses a whitebox 
>> approach and focuses
>> its efforts on the code contained by files that have changed 
>> since the last
>> testing cycle.
>Well, first of all, the original poster (Katherine) indicated that the QA
>department were not programmers, so I doubt they're doing white box testing.
>In any case, 'cvs diff' can tell you what has changed between tags.

QA may still be aware of certain aspects of the design, such as which
directories contain the implementations of which features.  They don't
need to be programmers to have that level of knowledge.

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