During the course of your software task you will need a way to keep track of offical release of your software’s revision.
Fortunely their are applications which help in this area.
These applications use a check-in check-out procedurce to track:
Date of changes
Who made a change.
Why was a change made.
Current condition of the code(checkin or checkout)
Check-in is a procedure to get a piece of code or any electronic content from you pc to a controlled database.
Check-out is the procedure to get a piece of code out the controlled database.
Each time the procedures occur a history is made in the database to help keep track of different version of the code.
A piece of code/ or application can have many versions before it is accepted as a release for used.
Configuration Management uses the final version information to lock down the version for the particular Revision.
Two Software Configuration Management(SCM) application examples are:
Microsoft SourceSafe( LV has an integration to this application)
IBM Rational ClearCase( More elaborate document control)
What happen in some case a testStation pc will not be connected to the intranet.
In this case make it a habit to do incremental backup and at the end of the day checkout the old sw and check in the end of the day copy.
Always do backup so you will not loss a whole day of effort for some unforseen issue.
Procedure for checkin/checkout may be outlined by your department.
SourceSafe is a product of Microsoft
Rational ClearCase is a product of IBM
Test Engineers Resource 