CM Crossroads provides original content, articles and regular columns from industry thought leaders, analysts and software providers on a wide variety of configuration management and application lifecycle management topics. Below you will find links directly to our columns and articles or you may use the search box to scan for a particular topic or writer.
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CM Basics
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Monday, 29 June 2009 |
 One of GNU make's many features
allows you to shorten build times by running more than one command at a
time. If your dependencies are all correct, or nearly correct, this can
give you a significant improvement, and since it's built into the tool
you get it "for free". But GNU make's parallel build feature -- often
called "dash j mode," after the command-line option that is used to
enable it -- is not without drawbacks. The worst of these is that GNU
make parallel builds can produce incorrect results if the build
dependencies are not sufficiently correct. Fixing that is way outside
the scope of this column. But we can do something about the second
biggest problem: the scrambled build log. It's not a perfect solution,
as you'll see, but it addresses a large portion of the problem, and
it's simple to implement.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 July 2009 )
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CM Basics
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Monday, 29 June 2009 |
 Tips for designing a CMDB
Have you ever purchased a generic, "one-size-fits-all" suit off the rack with the hope it fits you perfectly? You typically find the suit doesn't fit and then you end up not wearing it, or trying to fix it yourself and ultimately end up unhappy with your purchase.
The alternative is to go to a store and design your suit to fit you perfectly with the help of the tailor and designer who takes your measurements, asks you what you need the suit for (what is driving your to make the purchase), where you are going to wear it, what you want to wear with it, etc. The point is, if you buy something generic and expect it to suit your needs exactly and immediately, you're usually in for big disappointment.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 July 2009 )
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CM Basics
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Monday, 29 June 2009 |
 The itSMF ITIL v3 framework is a set of best practices that describes what you need to do in order to implement excellent IT Service Management. The ITIL v3 framework is also very much focused on implementing excellent Configuration Management processes. I have personally been very impressed with ITIL - especially two of its key tools. The first is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and the second is the Configuration Management System (CMS). CM practitioners need to take the deep dive into ITIL and all of its CM related best practices. Here is a brief explanation of the CMS and the CMDB to get you started.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 30 June 2009 )
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CM Basics
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Monday, 29 June 2009 |
 Build Configurations
Let us consider a few scenarios which make necessity for build configurations obvious.
Scenario I:
Your
build is a web application. You need a quick jetty-deploy available for
convenient development. Conversely, you need a javadocs plugin in your
release builds but, don't want them to interfere with your development
environment.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 30 June 2009 )
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CM Basics
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Monday, 29 June 2009 |
 Answer these 7 questions to quickly assess if you should upgrade to an enterprise-class CI environment
Because of the fast evolution of Continuous Integration (CI), the first generation of enablement tools proliferated at lightning speed. Open source CI tools became widely used due to the ease in which an engineer could install it and start tackling the initial CI challenges that he faced. Once proven effective, these apps (particularly Cruise Control) spread like wildfire among other build engineers, and in most cases, development shops began ‘sewing' several instances together.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 29 June 2009 )
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Implementation Excellence
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Tuesday, 16 June 2009 |
 Does
the title of this article sound silly? I
mean, doesn’t everyone know what a Configuration Management (CM) tool is? Isn’t a Configuration Management CM tool something
that provides version control functionality?
Well, the short answer is yes but only in its most simplistic form. CM as a discipline goes well beyond simple
version control. It is important to look
beyond what vendors define as classic CM tools and consider CM in terms of the
full practice and processes they offer. CM
at its very essence covers identification, control, audit, and report. Many would expand control to include version
control, change control, build management, and release engineering.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 16 June 2009 )
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Behaviorally Speaking
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Monday, 15 June 2009 |
 With Father's Day only a couple of weeks away, I am dreaming of the hedge trimmer or power saw that my family is almost certain to get me as a father's day gift to me. Such choices are about as silly as getting mom a new washing machine or blender (no doubt to bake me a cake). Now if you really want to get me a great gift then you would land me some new software such as Microsoft's TFS (which might actually be the only Version Control tool that I have not played with yet). Taking the shrink wrap off some new packaged software is almost as much as fun as unpacking a new computer system. I am probably not the only technology geek who really loves taking part in tools selection. I have also made a lot of mistakes and have more than a few "lessons learned" to share. Read on if you would like to share some ideas on how to effectively select your next set of software tools (oh and leave the hedge trimmer to the gardner).
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 16 June 2009 )
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