Just a general question I would love some opinions on. How do you all manage having products "out there" in different flavors and versions as well as a version under development?

Basically I am trying to figure out a better way to have a given version of a given program preserved while I move on with development. For instance, I publish and distribute a version of an application, lets call this version 1. To support version 1's userbase I need to have a copy of that code, database, and other pieces that make up my application so I can debug here if necessary. Now I have version 1.5 in development that has some simple, and some not so simple changes to all the assets of version 1. See where I am going. It was easy in VFP, (inzip your application folder and you were good to go), with .NET, SF, DDT, BO projects, security projects, version control, etc I am just not sure what is the best way to go as we start having some more stuff out there in he world in different flavors and versions to support.

This is probably something some of you take for granted and I would appreciate your opinions. I have several products now that I have to maintain the environment described above.

Keith Chisarik

Well, there is only one way to do this successfully, and that is creating branches.  Whenever we release a version of our software into the field, we create a branch within Team Foundation.  Then we continue to develop on the current branch.  If something comes up that needs to be fixed on the current version in teh field (or an older one) we will download that branched version from source control, fix the changes, and then either post a patch or create a new build.  Our build process even has the ability to take the branch into account so we can tell the build to either use the current version (default) or select a previous branched version.  We have to add the branch to our build process with each branch, but in a crunch we can get back to ground zero.  We even copy our DDT packages to a "previous builds" folder so in the advent of structures changes, etc. we will still be good (learned this one the hard way ). 

What's cool about this is that if I had to make a change on one version (branch) that will need to be made in the current branch, I can merge the branches or even just a single class or file from the branch so that all versions will have the fix.  There is a lot of logic here that is really nice.

But here is the downside...you will need a version control software other than VSS.  We use Team Foundation, but others out there such as SourceGear Vault (http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/index.html) that have this functionality as well.  If you will refer to the training guide when you were here, in section 4.2.2 (Team Environment Software and Selection) you will get some more details on some of the options out there.