CMS vs. SCS

Luis Colorado wrote:

Joe,

If you are not a big believer in source control systems like CVS, what do you believe in? Any recommendations?

For production work, CMS (Change Management Systems) provide much more functionality than SCS (source control systems).

CMS is indispensable if you have even two programmers in a shop. Heck, CMS is nice if you can afford it in a one-person shop. It's essential to be able to relate objects together (display file and program), to check them out, and to be able to promote both source and object through phases such as development, QA and production (not to mention being able to distribute them to other machines in larger environments).

It's even more of an issue when you start talking about multi-tiered environments with things like configuration files, internal databases, binary files (DLLs, JARs, etc), images, you name it. And really good systems provide hooks to things like incident reporting and bug tracking, and even project management.

Most source control systems are about allowing multiple people to write code. CMS systems are for managing application development and distribution.

I recommend none, especially since David Gibbs works for MKS, and if I suggested MKS was best I'd be accused of pandering to the chief <grin>. (And if I didn't, my posts would mysteriously start being rejected... (ducking and running)).

Joe