This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Simon Brown. Original Post: I miss our green blog Feed Title: Simon Brown's weblog Feed URL: http://www.simongbrown.com/blog/feed.xml?flavor=rss20&category=java Feed Description: My thoughts on Java, software development and technology. Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Simon Brown Latest Posts From Simon Brown's weblog

I posted an entry towards the end of last year saying that Subversion rocks. Back then, we didn't have access to the source code control system at the customer's site so we set up a Subversion repository as a temporary measure. Subversion still rocks, but the time has come to migrate across to the customer's system, which is called AllChange. If you've not heard of it (which is more than likely!), it's a cross between a source code control system and a change management system, much like ClearCase/ClearQuest when integrated to use Rational's unified change management (UCM) process. It has a pessimistic locking model and basically you can't checkout code to work on unless a change request has been raised in the system for you to log the checkout against. As an exercise, I'll leave it for you to decide whether this is good or bad but a little process goes a long way.

The other thing about AllChange is that it has some "interesting" "features" and a rather unique terminology. Checking out code is synonymous with other source code control systems in that you can checkout to get the latest copy of the code into your local sandbox. More specifically, you can check-out readonly or check-out for edit, providing you have a change request of course. Where things start to get "interesting" is around checking in code. In AllChange, checking in code means "delete from my local sandbox" and we've already had a few blank faces as the team look at empty directory structures! Whenever you check-in an edited file, you have to remember to choose the option to check-out the file immediately afterwards otherwise your local copy gets zapped. Branching and tagging is available in AllChange but I'll save that for another time because I don't truly yet understand it! I think it kind of resembles the same concepts found in CVS, Subversion, Clearcase, VSS, et al but I'm not entirely sure.

So, here we are with AllChange and I'm missing our green blog. CruiseControl easily integrates with pretty much every source code control system, but a search for AllChange and CruiseControl on Google returns very little. I think integrating AllChange and CruiseControl should be possible and I have some options that I'm going to investigate.

1. Find out what standard interfaces are provided by AllChange and if CruiseControl natively supports them.
2. Find out about the AllChange command line tool (acc.exe) and use Ant's exec task to check-out everything from the repository.
3. Use the java.awt.Robot class to fire up the AllChange GUI and issue the correct sequence of menu shortcuts to perform a check-out (like this). Having your build server start up a GUI could be a little disconcerting, but it does sound like a fun project!

If anybody has tried integrating AllChange and CruiseControl then I'd be really grateful to hear from you. I miss our green blog!