Experiencing CMT in Software Production of Large and Complex Projects Issues in the Scalability of Software Production Management

摘要

The configuration management tool CMT has been used since several years now, and in quite different projects (Virgo, GLAST, LHCb, Auger, Atlas, etc.). The features of the tool have continuously evolved according to the growing needs of the developers and to follow the increasing complexity of the software bases it has to service. However the original concepts: readability, simplicity, flexibility, completeness have been preserved and the syntax of the core element of the system - the requirements file - has been always kept backward compatible. More and more project specific conventions and needs have found their expression using CMT, and simultaneously the focuses to CMT features have evolved accordingly, progressively raising importance towards language customisation, new document generators, production of patterns, package organization and software distribution. The basic properties of the CMT toolkit will be shortly presented but the focus of the discussion will be set to these recent evolutions, through some typical examples obtained from actual projects showing specific definitions or conventions. The discussion is then extended towards the generalized question of the scalability in software production and management in the context of e.g. Grid technologies. The impact of using generic and high level tools such as CMT, which already offers several solutions, RPM or the Grid technologies, in this respect will be presented. In particular, the role of formal specifications for the software configuration appears to be critical for query mechanisms required in management operations or in remote actions.