Volume Number: 26
Issue Number: 07
Column Tag: Kool Tools

Kool Tools: PureCM Professional

by Dennis Sellers

PureCM Professional, a cross-platform software configuration management solution from PureCM (http://www.purecm.com) gets more powerful with each release. The latest version (2010-1a) sports a range of beefed-up features to support agile application lifecycle management (ALM). ALM products are designed for development managers, product owners, and teams with mixed development methodologies and others who need management visibility of projects throughout the development cycle.

PureCM's planning capabilities fully support working with project releases, iterations and backlogs. The app also automates task tracking, which simplifies parallel development by matching tasks to releases and offers context to any code changes you make.

Another strong point: isolated features. When starting work on a feature, PureCM Professional automatically creates a feature stream and maps the developer workspace against it, so developers don't have to manually create a branch. Also, PureCM Professional automatically updates features with any changes from their parent version as a default. In the event of an update conflict, feature owners are automatically notified via their user Dashboard so they can resolve the conflict using PureCM's visual resolve tool.

Feature owners receive a notification to integrate the feature back into the parent code line as soon as developers complete a feature. PureCM Professional also enables a release history. Features and tasks can be seen in the project history pane-not individual file changes or intermediate submits - so even if a feature has been submitted against multiple times for completion, it only shows up once to allow for easy merging to other versions or even a roll-back.

You can schedule features and tasks via drag and drop from project backlogs. And PureCM Professional simplifies build automation and continuous integration for quick feedback. The software's security policies and user permissions help protect your work and data.

Each module of PureCM (planning, tracking, source control) can be enabled or disabled using policies, allowing for step-by-step adoption. It comes with a proxy server that caches data locally to accelerate data access for distributed teams.

Additional features include multiple performance and ergonomic enhancements for developers. Plus, it's scalable. PureCM supports up to multiple terabytes of data and thousands of connections.

PureCM uses a client/server architecture; a central server stores all data. You access the project data through a variety of clients and can connect from anywhere using TCP/IP. The PureCM server and client are all you need to run PureCM. Of course, you can enhance them with any other components, all of which are included in the PureCM standard license.

The centralized database contains one or more repositories. Administrators can manage who sees and retrieves any or all of the data by defining users and access policies on the server. The PureCM server runs on multiple platforms and can be accessed from clients running on the same or different platforms.

The PureCM client installer includes both the GUI client and the command-line client. The client needs to be installed on each user's machine to connect to the central PureCM server through TCP/IP. Once connected, the PureCM client is used to manage both the server and your local workspace.

The GUI client comes with several visualization tools, such as the diff/merge tool or the file history annotation. Alternatively, PureCM also lets you use your favorite third-party tools. The PureCM client is available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux; the command line also supports Solaris.

PureCM 2010-1 is available in two editions: PureCM Standard and PureCM Professional. Contact PureCM for pricing info. A demo is available for download.

Dennis Sellers is a long time journalist. He started in the newspaper business, but has been in the online journalism business for the past 15 years. He's the editor/publisher of Macsimum News (http://www.macsimumnews.com)