I’m looking to stear my team into this century and use source control. The developers are very capable of handling source control software – be it command line based or GUI based, Windows or -Nix.
The reason they’ve been locally and individually handling their code (which deeply frightens me) is because our CM group is not as technically savvy nor comfortable with the whole check-in/out process.
Is there a source control software out there that is geared towards the CM group? I’m thinking of one that would allow them to select a version of a file out of all that have been checked in and mark it for the build they are trying to create.
If you consider the CM (configuration Management) group as in charge of a release management process, then you could isolate them from the “technical details” of any (D)VCS tool you might choose by establishing a good publication process.
The publication consists of making visible somewhere (a shared directory, an artifact repository like Nexus, dedicated to releases, …):
The CM group take that set of deliveries, manages the release process and the promotion between the different deployment environment (Integration, UAT, pre-prod, prod, …), without having to deal with the VCS tool.
That also enforces a strong separation between dev and prod (both in term of environment and process), which allows for the devs to adopt whatever workflow of development they want, withtout affect the way the CM group works.