Check In Frequency
Checking in to source control should be done early and often. I’ve taken this as a given since my first early days working in CVS. (I still working in CVS these days as it’s a good enough tool.)
In a current project I got really busy with vendor meetings and other items during which time:
- Over the course of a week I saw only an occasional check-in maybe once per day.
- The check-ins were all by the same developer.
- There were a total of zero check ins by the other three developers.
My preference is to check in at least every hour or so when working. The only rule is it has to still compile and the tests have to run. If I have to I’ll even comment out a broken test so I can do a successful checkin.
An opportunity for group feedback next week.
Ed Gibbs @ September 15, 2006
You should try Subversion.
Is see checking in only once or day (or less) to be like only talking to the rest of the team once or day (or less).
Sometimes I fall back to gentle prodding. My defacto operating style is to build consensus. But sometimes you have to be blunt about things.
Ed, what factors do you see as causing the low frequency of check-ins and the lack of participation in the process by some of the developers? Is it a question of team culture, or is it something more concrete like tests taking too long to run?
Team culture issues mostly. Some of the developers come from backgrounds where they worked on the code for weeks and weeks before attempting integration. (Mainframe environments) Breaking some of those habits has been harder than I assumed.