Status for Andrew DeFaria

Release Records vs. Switch Config specs

Meantime I spoke with John about this and Release Records and learned a little bit about them. From what I understand the work I did regarding config spec Switch Config files should more properly be moved to Release Records. John explained that in general there are 3 sections to config specs (well some config specs for some projects).

The first section is generated by the UCM process of creating UCM related views that have components. These are delineated by "ucm" and "end ucm" markers in the config spec.

After that are any custom rules that you may want. This is where Release Records come in. The whole WOR oriented Clearquest mechanism already knows about Release Records. They are actually stored in Clearquest and are added to the end of the config spec at view creation time (by createView.pl that is).

So what are Switch Config files (Nit: I don't like the term Switcher Config. The script is called switchConfig.pl not switcherConfig.pl...)? Well there are files which are stuffed into config specs after "end ucm" but before Release Records by the switchConfig.pl script.

However the intent of Switch Config files is to allow you to switch target type things (e.g. Solaris vs. PPC vs. SimCello) while the intent of Release Records was to specify which versions of the tools you want to use. So eventually, I will need to migrate the tools related lines from Switch Config files to Release Records.