Re: PL/SQL Source Control Software

I would like to second Iam's recommendation for Component Software's tools.

We are using Component Software's (CS-RCS) interface to GNU-RCS. The cost of this interface is about $75 per named user: http://www.componentsoftware.com/ (If you are working alone you could just use GNU-RCS directly or the CS-RCS personal version for free.)

One of the reasons for rejecting Visual Source Safe was that we were not able to insert tags into the code allowing us to identify which version of the code was in production. (At least we couldn't find a way when we were evaluating it.) In RCS you have the $Id: $ tag that inserts the version information into a string in the code for you. You can then write a function to retrieve this string.

Another reason for using RCS was that it was available on both unix and windows.

Also there is a command line interface which allows us to integrate the check in and out from editors such as ultraedit. Indeed any editor that allows you to run an os command without leaving the editor would support this feature.

An administrative repository for the RCS files is created on a windows machine. From here the project lead checks the files into RCS which places them in the RCS format on another machine as files. Each developer can then check out (and lock) versions as needed to the developer's personal workstation. The plsql is compiled to the development database which could be on any platform the developer can access through sqlplus. At "milestone" periods the project lead checks out the entire project and assigns it a symbolic name which is stored in the plsql code upon checkin. We don't use Component Software's milestone functionality which does not seem to integrate well with the $Name: $ tag.

I suspect there are fancier version control systems, but the biggest hurdle will be to get developers who are not used to using any version control system to accept the idea that they can be very useful.

Frank Hubeny

lam wrote:

> I worked with a software house where they use Visual Source Safe for revision
> control (I dont mean to promote Microsoft products). I never succeed to
> interface with this tool in command line. Which means you have a lot to click
> when checking in 30, 40 files. The GUI works well, though. I personally use a
> standalone free copy of ComponentSoftware CS-RCS and quite like it. The
> command line interface is also ok. They have a .com web site for trial
> download.
>
> If your Windows workstations can mount Unix filesystem via NFS, then the
> classical RCS or SCCS are a viable option and it is absolutely free.
Received on Thu May 11 2000 - 00:00:00 CEST