Today was a busy day. I had initiated the release of two of our apps to the customer. We funnel all build requests through the configuration management team. While I was away from my desk, they had troubles with the first build. Another developer stepped in and set them straight.This developer who helped out was the guy who developed the build scripts. Since the first build went wrong, he kept an eye on the second build done by the configuration management team. It is easy for him to do this since he coded the build scripts to e-mail him every time a build completed.
He came by to deliver the bad news. The second build got screwed up too. The problem stemmed from the fact that I update a configuration file that is used by the build. I put a Clearcase label on that version of the configuration file. The configuration management team then tries to use Clearcase to merge this version of the file into their branch. This merge did not work with either build today.
Using the current process, it seems the had a 50% change of getting the merge right. But I guess they did not understand what they were merging. I brought the author of the build scripts upstair to sort this out with our configuration management team. I told them that I set up all the configuration data for each build I request. We agreed that they would stop trying to merge these changes in, and just cut-and-paste the file I label.
Some times you just got to sit back and laugh.
