Code & Release Management

By: Eli White (HiiDef Inc / Goodsie.com)

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

 Welcome!

Who the heck is this guy?

2 Code & Release Management - Eli White - Tek X - May 19th, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
 Welcome!

Who the heck is this guy?

2 Code & Release Management - Eli White - Tek X - May 19th, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
 What are we talking about?
Managing the daily workflow, from editing to testing & releasing

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 Version Control
•Use it!
It is the core component of this process.

•Many variations
All have same core concepts:
•Checkout, Committing, Merging, Concurrency

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 Version Control Options

CVS

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 Version Control Options

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 Version Control Terminology
Commit / Check-in
Changes to the code base are added to the repository

Branch
Making a copy of the code to be managed in parallel

Tag
Marking a snapshot in time of a set of files

Trunk
The main line of development, before branching

Merge
Combining two sets of changes into one

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 Subversion (SVN) 101
•Subversion thinks in terms of a directory structure

•Projects are subdirectories of a repository:

//host/project

•The mainline (trunk) of code:

//host/project/trunk

•Branches & Tags have parallel directories:

//host/project/branches/v3.0
//host/project/tags/v3.0.1

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 Version Control Policies
•Come up with general rules that you apply:
Intermediate (non-working) checkins?
Where should you check code in?
Are there places that are less controlled?
How does this flow into releases?
What about tags vs branches vs trunk?

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 Uses of Tags/Branches/Trunk
•No matter what style of management:

•Trunk:
Contains the 'core' codebase

•Branches:
Used to 'segment' into logical areas of responsibility

•Tags:
Marking a specific state of code, a release

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 Different Branch Methodologies
How to organize your releases

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 Explore Three Styles

h e s
ra nc
ge B e s
St a a n ch
e Br
a t u r
Fe
Bra n c h e s
Re le a se

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 Stage Branches
•All new work done against Trunk

•Branches exist for each stage of a project:

 staging, production, etc.

•When ready for a release, merge into staging

•After testing, merge into production

•Tag against production branch for releases

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 Stage Branches

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 Stage Branches
Pros: Cons:
Simple No parallel work
No dynamic branches No old patches
No room for errors
Long scale work hard
Error prone merging

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 Feature Branches
•All new work done in it's own branch
•When complete, the new feature is tested
•Once ready, it's merged to trunk
•Trunk is tagged as needed for phases:
For testing/QA, Releasing, etc

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 Feature Branches

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 Feature Branches
Pros: Cons:
Parallel work easy Often creating branches
Long scale work easy Lots of merging
No old patches
Fixes are complicated

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 Release Branches
•All new work done on trunk

•When ready for release, create a versional branch:

/branches/v3.0

•Test against the branch

•Tag the branch with a versional tag for release:

/tags/v3.0.0

•Fix bugs against branch, and tag as needed

•Continue doing new work against trunk

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 Release Branches

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 Release Branches
Pros: Cons:
Easy maintenance Branch/Tag creation
Long scale work OK Assumes single goal
Some parallel work
Little merging

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 Mix and Match

You go
t featu
re bran
ches in m y r
elease
bran ch!

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 Pushing Code Live
You’ve managed the development, but now take it live!

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 Pushing Code Live
•Have a script

•Handle multiple machines

•Use for all phases staging/testing

•Have a rollback procedure

•Multiple ways to accomplish

•Incorporate everything together:

Services, DB, PHP, etc

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 So Many Options
Discuss a couple of common ones:

k ou t
N C hec
ve SV
L i
SVN E
xport
& rsy
nc

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 Live SVN Checkout

Have a working SVN checkout on the live servers,

just perform SVN update or switch

 Simple
 Some benefits of having live copy
 Drawbacks:
• Conflicts, Hard to automate & rollback

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 SVN Export & rsync

Use SVN Export to make a copy of the code,

then use rsync to transfer changed files to live.

 Simple
 Easy to scale & automate

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 Problems with partial Updates with rsync
•rsync is not atomic

•You might have web traffic while codebase is partially updated

•Solutions?
Take website offline
Use symlinks

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 Rollbacks with rsync
•You will need to rollback, expect it!

•Solutions?
rsync again
Use symlinks

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 Questions?

For this presentation & more:

http://eliw.com/

Twitter: @eliw

HiiDef: http://hiidef.com/
Goodsie: http://goodsie.com/

Rate Me: http://joind.in/1579

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