[Chicago-talk] Question of preference

[Steven Lembark]

Shawn Carroll wrote:
> What are peoples thoughts on a SCM utility that would not allow you to
> check in code that failed certain tests?  Perl code that cannot
> compile, code that has alerts in Perl::Critic, etc.  Or that the SCM
> would use perltidy to put the code into the teams style upon checkin?

SVN supports this via pre-commit checks; problem
is that you usually want people checking in code
regularly to avoid loss of work. Catch: if you
can only check in working code then you cannot
make periodic checkins to make sure you don't
loose work.

Fix: Have people work in separate branches of
their own during development and merge the changes
for working code to a 'clean' branch. You can use
social engineering (or a taser) to ensure that
code merged into the more stable branches passes
the tests (and that people are given time to write
usable tests).

-- 
Steven Lembark                                          +1 888 359 3508
Workhorse Computing                                       85-09 90th St
lembark at wrkhors.com                                 Woodhaven, NY 11421