Other message I forgot to send to the list:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Xavier Hanin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Jan 4, 2007 12:05 PM
Subject: Re: Build promotion?
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

On 1/4/07, Andreas Sahlbach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On 1/4/07, Xavier Hanin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Thanks for sharing these useful tips and opinion. I agree  that as often
> it's a matter of taste, but I think you point something interesting: you
say
> that you have a build which is reproducible, but you don't want to take
the
> risk. So there is a risk. So you are not confident your build is
> reproducible.

The problem is: there is always a risk. If you and I would be the only
developers in our development team, the risk would be very low I
guess. But that's not the case. My build is used from around a dozen
developers, if you add the people Matthias Kilian is advising, call
that around 20 developers. So we now have 20 opinions regarding build
standards and these opinions include ideas like "I've made a last
minute fix that missed the build, let's move the release tag".


I agree that you always have to deal with a lot of opinions, and consider
them very carefully, especially when they come from people who pays you :-)
But when people suggest things like moving a tag, I spend time (usually
after things have calmed down) explaining why it's dangerous and what the
consequences could be. Then if the development team still want to be able to
introduce unreliable tricks in the release, it's up to them...

On the other hand: if something goes wrong during a release, I am in
deep, deep trouble. A lot of people will become very angry with me
little freelancer, because if we have made a mistake, a lot of stuff
does not work here and this could possibly end up in production
problems (which is a very expensive thing to do if you work for an
automotive enterprise like I do).


I understand, that's why introducing automatic comparison of the builds can
ensure that you end up with exactly what you want, and be confident people
won't be angry about you. But I agree that this is not suitable in all
contexts.

Xavier


So my build is reproducible because I automatically store svn-url and
svn-version-number into every build I make, allowing only to publish
into the enterprise repository, if the svn wc, the build is based of,
is fully checked in and is not a mixed wc. But still I don't want to
take the risk, call me a coward if you want :)

Regards,

Andreas

--
Andreas Sahlbach

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