Using virtual machines for development

Question

I've recently been given the role of managing or development environment which includes:

• Managing the version control system (subversion) in which we typically have one major branch which is released to production every 6 months, a maintenance branch which is released every 2 month to fix non-major bugs found by users and a couple of branches related to bugs which just can't wait for the maintenance release.
• Managing our databases so that we have a development database for each branch of the code

We've not long moved over to using the version control system and have had the following issues:

• Developers who work on a number of branches concurrently can quite often end up developing against the wrong database (we have around 15 developers)
• A lack of a decent strategy for managing the release of branches into production and the propagation back into other branches
• A lack of a decent strategy for managing the databases associated with each branch (i.e. should we keep a script which is aligned with the production environment and then a script to bring each database user in line with the needs of the branch)

I had thought of using a Virtual Machine for each branch of the code (i.e. A VM containing an Oracle Express database user, a Coldfusion Administrator with the correct setup for things like data sources, and development tools like the IDE and Tortoise).

I was looking for any suggestions anybody might have to help with any of these issues as I'm finding it really difficult to manage the process. I understand that no 2 companies have the exact same setup but I'd welcome any help.

Answer 1

I think that the best solution for you can be to start using continuous integration applied to your product life cycle strategy. You can read about it over the web:

• Continuous integration
• Great open-source framework for continues integration!

I hope this helps you, but your question is quite hard to answer 'cause there are a lot of parameters to answer which always very from company to company, you should consider hiring a consultant to help you. He/She will have to come to your company and help you decide and implement.

Answer 2

I would start by asking each of the developers why this kind of mistake happens. If a developer has recently made the mistake, then get them to explain how they did it and what might help them in future. Also talk to developers that have not recently made a mistake.

I'm assuming that you have a server with Oracle and all the different flavors of the db running on it using different port numbers. In that case you would create a new db instance to go with each branch and the problem is how to help the developer set up a context before working on the branch.

Tortoise SVN is a nice tool, but perhaps this is a situation where it would be better to have some kind of small app that does the checkout, and remove Tortoise from the machines. The small app could keep a window floating on screen showing the currently active branch, and it could handle checkout and checkin, as well as making sure the right port number is used.