duane@cg-atla.UUCP (Andrew Duane) (11/02/88)
I have just been placed into a Corrective Action Team at my company to look into the issues involved with starting and running a company-wide software library. This library would serve primarily as a safe place to archive "part-numbered" product code at release time. This is code that is REQUIRED in various product lines, and should be shared among projects. It is not entire projects, but simple pieces that will need to be used elsewhere now and in the future. Examples are: * Production kernel drivers for one of our in-house built boards. * The standard composition package for our composition machines. * Diagnostic boot ROMs for various sun3-based products. * Useful bitmap/mouse menu packages and fill routines. All of these items (and we have many more) share several attributes: they are written once to a spec, and then will need to be used in other places besides where they were originally written. They are actual product code: we sell them with our machines, and customers would like to know that composition would be the same on CG model 1 and CG model 2 and CG model foobar-12345. The software engineers on the various projects currently use a very informal approach; I need the driver to this board, so I call up someone else that I know uses it and get his local pathname to copy it from. The obvious result is a chaos of different versions, bug fixes that only make it to some machines, and so on. I am interested in how other companies deal with this. We are trying to keep it as simple as posible, knowing how engineers even hate to be forced to use (ACK!) sccs. We envision something like a UUCP public archive site (on ethernet) that keeps an index of what is available and allows retrieval of copies, almost like a lending library. The problem is how to ENFORCE putting these pieces there, and how smooth the ruffled managerial feathers when they find out they won't get the credit for writing this piece of code in their department. Please try to E-MAIL (decvax is the preferred route). I will summarize if I get enough useful responses. Andrew L. Duane (JOT-7) w:(508)-658-5600 X5993 h:(603)-434-7934 Compugraphic Corp. decvax!cg-atla!duane 200 Ballardvale St. ulowell/ \laidback Wilmington, Mass. 01887 cbosgd!ima/ \cgeuro Mail Stop 200II-3-5S ism780c/ \wizvax Only my cat shares my opinions, and she doesn't know "C".