So you have Source Code Management…

Sunday (yesterday) started well enough - woke up to a nice sunny day, decided to make a pack-up and go to the beach; maybe a barbecue when we got back…

Then, I turned the computer on and checked emails (bad mistake) and saw a whole series of these…

***** Nagios *****
Notification Type: PROBLEM
Service: SAMBA
Host: Venom (Web Development Servers
Address: 10.2.2.182
State: CRITICAL
Date/Time: Sat Jun 7 23:59:00 BST 2008
Additional Info:
CRITICAL SMB anon access: Receiving SMB: Server stopped responding

… great - there goes the day off.

This got me thinking…

Well at least if the disk has died or something, we will be fine because everyone has their development code checked into the Subversion repository. Or have they?

Many moons ago I read Practises of an Agile Developer - most of it was an exercise in stating the bleedin’ obvious, although it was good to see a bunch of “good practice” gathered all in one place. One of the ideas was that whilst it is useful to get source code management up and running, what happens when you don’t use it?

So we have source code management - and I moan, hassle and generally cajole the team into checking in code they are working on as often as possible. If I don’t see a handful of new commit messages every day I am not a happy bunny. Oft, my response to “I’ll get it checked in when I have done x and y in a couple of days” is a parental type “yeah, but what if the worst happens, like a dev server dies - then you’ll lose your work”. At the end of the day, once I have done the best I can to show the right way, it’s down to the team to take some responsibility and take right way for themselves.

I won’t take any pleasure in saying “I told you so”… but I’ll say it all the same.

As with a lot of things in life, your source code management system is only as good (and up to date) as the stuff you put in.

Talk about stating the bleedin’ obvious…