User Guide - Mks.com

Working With Variants and Development Paths
Working With Variants and Development
Paths
Regular sandboxes are based on the current state of the project. You can
also create a sandbox that is based on a previously checkpointed revision
of the project. This type of sandbox is called a variant.
When you create a variant project, you choose a checkpoint (baseline) of
your project and use it as the starting point for a new branch of
development. Source Integrity allows you to do this by defining a new
development path.
A development path is an identifier given to a new branch of software
development. Changes made through the new development path are kept
separate from the main development trunk, unless you choose to merge
them later.
The trunk is the primary line of a file’s change history in a history. The first
member of the trunk is always the original file checked into the archive.
Source Integrity allows multiple developers to point to the same
development path, each using their own variant sandbox. In the variant
sandbox, you can see the current state of the project along that
development path and the changes made by other developers using it.
Development paths are useful for:
building customized versions of a product
performing branch development work
performing post-release maintenance
fixing defects in previous versions of the product
testing new features outside of the main development path
experimenting with research that does not affect regular development
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