Version Control Blog

Continuous Integration was popularized by Martin Fowler and Kent Beck. It is so tightly integrated with version control system (”Maintain a Single Source Repository”, “Everyone Commits Every Day”, “Don’t Commit Broken Code” are basic practices of CI), that it clearly deserves mentioning here. Martin Fowler wrote an overview article: “Continuous Integration”.

“Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk” is the book by Paul Duvall which was published in Martin Fowler signature series. You may find sample chapters online:

• Chapter II. “Introducing Continuous Integration” on the book website http://integratebutton.com/;
• Chapter VI. “Continuous Testing” on Infoq.com.

Second chapter in O’Reilly book “Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think” was written by Karl Fogel, and is called “Subversion’s Delta Editor: Interface as Ontology”. Karl has put this chapter online under the free license.

Read this chapter online: rants.org: “Beautiful Code Chapter Now Online”.

“Open Source Development with CVS” by Karl Fogel and Moshe Bar is one of the obligatory books to mention here. Of course, CVS is becoming somewhat irrelevant these days (except for the public project hosting services, where it prevails), but this book is of moderate size (368 pages), packed with useful information (if you still have to use CVS and wish to upgrade your knowledge somewhat), written by world-famous developers (Karl Fogel of CVS and Subversion fame, Moshe Bar of openMosix, Xen and KVM fames), and is available freely on the Internet (under the GNU GPL). Book covers CVS basics, repository administration, and some advanced (for CVS world) features. It contains extensive CVS reference, has many tips and troubleshooting advices, and briefly describes various third-party tools which make the CVS more useful. Read it online: Karl Fogel, Moshe Bar “Open Source Development with CVS”; download in PDF form; see the book’s official site. Buy at Amazon: Open Source Development with CVS. More books on version control and SCM: Version Control Blog Library.

James Shore and chromatic are currently writing a book, “The Art of Agile Development”. Drafts are published for pre-publication review at The Art of Agile Development. In particular, a chapter on version control.

Karl Fogel, one of the lead developers behind Subversion and CVS, wrote a book on Open Source software development. A large part of text is dedicated to the social side of software development: communication, finances, managing volunteers, licenses. Technical side is also strong, as could be expected from a developer of such caliber. Of course, Karl has quite a few words about version control as applied to topic. The book is available freely under the open license. You may browse it online at Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project. Particularly, the version control chapter is at Chapter 3. Technical Infrastructure: Version Control. You may also buy the book at Amazon: Karl Fogel: “Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project”. More books at Amazon aStore.