User Guide - Mks.com

Chapter 12: Advanced Change Package Operations
Change Package Feature Overview
Change
Package
Methodology
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A change package is a group of changes made by a single user which can be
considered a logical unit of work. Only the creator of a change package
may add entries to that change package. Change packages entries take the
form of operations, both deferred and committed. Apply CP and Resync
CP only apply to committed change packages entries.
Both Apply CP and Resync CP rely on the use of change packages to track
individual changes that modify project content or create new content. If a
development team is using change packages consistently, Source Integrity
can isolate all changes related to a specific issue because this information is
recorded as part of the change package. Once the dependencies are
calculated, the operation completes and the change packages are applied in
the project.
If a development team does not use the change package methodology,
isolating specific content becomes a complex, manual task. In a large code
project, this could mean searching hundreds of files to determine which
ones are related to a specific issue. To build the project, it would then be
necessary to add and drop files, update file revisions, merge around
unwanted revisions, merge in required changes, and merge out any
unwanted changes.
Using the functionality of Apply CP and Resync CP, this complicated
process becomes largely automated. In Source Integrity, the Apply CP
operation adds and drops files, and updates file revisions as required to
create the desired change. If merging is required, you can use the Resync
CP command. Resync CP allows you to either merge in desired changes or
merge around unwanted changes.
Apply CP and Resync CP are most useful for code and other text files
where differencing can be performed. The operations are not
recommended for binary files because of the difficulties encountered in
differencing and merging binaries.
When used across a development project, Apply CP and Resync CP are
powerful tools for managing changes and new content. However, the
effectiveness of the functionality ultimately relies on the following factors:
accurate and consistent use of change packages for logging issues
associating related changes into a single change package that
ultimately addresses the issue in question
Because issues, and their associated change packages, follow a workflow
progression, it is critical that each member of the development team record
and track all changes as they are made, from the initial phase to the
u s e r g u i d e