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Subject:Re: Do you log your changes? From:"Monica Cellio" <cellio -at- pobox -dot- com> To:"techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:34:12 -0500 (EST)
Source control with a rigorous system of bug entries and task branches.
So, for example, when we want to add a new book to the doc set or document
a new feature in an existing one, we branch the affected source files
(only) and make the changes there. We cna build from the task branch, and
that's how we conduct reviews. QA, the integration lead, or anyone else
who cares can review the changelists against that task branch to know what
this piece of work entails (and doesn't have to filter out concurrent
changes). When the changes pass review, the task branch is merged to the
mainline.
There is also an associated bug (that's where the name of the task branch
comes from) where relevant discussion happens. The bug gives us a thing
to track; it can be assigned to the author, reviewer, integrator, etc at
various points in its lifecycle. You can also navigate from the bug to
its associated changelists.
This sounds complicated but it's not. It isolates changes (helpful for
multiple authors), but the real value is that anyone at all can easily get
a sense of the impact of any given change. So far no one is producing
per-release change logs, but if they wanted to they could from this
system.
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