Release Notes

DevOps preview is now public!

You have probably read about our effort to help companies implement DevOps successfully (Read more about the story of our DevOps Initiative here). Wait no more, the DevOps Initiative is now live!

== What is the DevOps Initiative all about ==

It is a new web interface inside the Plastic webadmin to monitor how branches are automatically merged when they meet a set of conditions.

This is the key fundamental to greatly considerably speed up the cycle of task branches and blends perfectly well with many development methodologies and best practices: SCRUM, Kanban, and more.

== mergebots – the heart of Plastic DevOps ==

The branches are processed and merged by mergebots.

A mergebot will automate the following manual tasks responsible for:

* Detect when a branch is ready to be merged. It can be an attribute set to the branch or the associated Jira issue/ticket set to a given status.

* Merge the branch to the destination branch (typically main, but it can be customized can be configured). Instead of actually merging to main, it will create a shelve, so the merge is not confirmed until tests pass.

* Launch the build of the shelve in your Continuous Integration System. This will be your Jira, TeamCity or Bamboo (support for more systems is coming, and customization is possible).

* Monitor the build.

* If the build passes, the shelve will be "confirmed": It will be checkedin to the branch.

* Notify of each step accordingly using email or Slack.

== We include a default mergebot, but more are coming ==

This version includes a default mergebot capable of doing "branch per task" together with trunk-based development. All the information about how it works is included in the web interface, so you just have to go to the DevOps section of the webadmin and discover how it works.

Our goal is to work with teams like yours to develop more mergebots tailored to your specific needs, so, if you are interested in trying it out and want to some guidance, please don’t hesitate and reach us at support@codicesoftware.com.

== One more thing ;-) ==

The Plastic SCM server now is capable of merging files. This is in fact required for the mergebot to be truly effective. It means if a file was modified by two developers, the mergebot can merge it if manual intervention is not required.

To reduce the chances of manual intervention, the Plastic SCM server is now powered by SemanticMerge, which means many conflicts that text-based tools consider manual, can now be automatic.

Yes, as awesome as it sounds.

REMARK: to enable this feature, you will have to write the following entry in the server.conf server config file:

<EnableDevops>true</EnableDevops>