Source Code Administration

Source Code Administration is an important aspect of SCM.

Ensuring wise and effective administration to your companies source code is vital to your organization's success.

• Determine OS requirement of the server
• Implement the specific tool server requirements

Do not allow yourself to think that because you are running RAID 0+, you do not have to worry about having backup because the data is redundant of the disk

Ensure your backups are being stored on a system that itself is being backed up nightly.

• Make sure your backup are happening.
• When a restore from backup is required is not the time to find out that the backup scripts have been failing.
• Test the backup process to make sure you are able to recover from what you are backing up.

Choose a source control tool that fits yours organization's requirements

Most SCM Engineers would probably agree that it is the processes that matter more than the tool.

However, if your development group uses an Agile methodology, it will be a bad fit to implement the full Dimensions process templates with all the roles and approvals.

Perform all tool specific administrative tasks

It is the responsibility of the SCM role to know and to understand the source control tool administrative tasks and to perform them properly and timely.

Read all the required manuals, installation documents, administration manuals and user guides.

It is a very good idea to join any vendor sponsored forums to keep abreast of all tool news.

Keep your source code repositories as clean as possible

• Create an user access policy to the source code
• Keep the access to the source accurate
• If people leave or change job responsibilities, make the required changes to the access lists
• Source Code Administration Best Practices
• Source Code Branching