Getting Started

This section contains the following topics:

CA Harvest SCM

CA Harvest Software Change Manager CA Harvest SCM helps you synchronize development activities throughout the application development lifecycle on multiple platforms and across your enterprise. CA Harvest SCM provides you with the following functionality:

Adaptability—You can easily adapt CA Harvest SCM to use your own development lifecycle processes. You can update or change CA Harvest SCM lifecycle templates as new process improvements are identified and approved. This adaptability keeps software changes under control, schedules on track, and your team up-to-date.
Security—You can control access to administrative functions and protect sensitive data. Options are provided for the secure use of command-line interface (CLI) and remote agent technology.
CA Harvest SCM authenticates users. CA Harvest SCM can control the execution of lifecycle processes and secure archived items. You can define each process in the CA Harvest SCM lifecycle to provide a flexible security model.
Usability—The CA Harvest SCM graphical user interface (the Workbench) provides you with ease-of-use and minimal training time.
Concurrent Development Support—More than one developer can work on the same area of code simultaneously without risk of overwriting changes. Developers can use merge utilities to resolve any conflicts between versions.
Parallel Development Support—You can maintain multiple releases of the same application. For example, you can work on emergency fixes for a release and at the same time work on the next release of that application. If necessary, you can merge changes made for the emergency into the main application development cycle.
Change and Defect Tracking—You can track changes and testing defects in associated packages and forms. Using reports, you can obtain current and historical information about changes and packages. Your application production environment provides a history of the development process, including specific changes and the reasons they were made.
Tool Integration—Interfaces from integrated development environments (IDEs) let developers perform routine SCM functions without leaving the IDE.
CA Harvest SCM enables Workbench users to plug in third-party difference and merge tools, such as Araxis Ltd. Merge and Guiffy Software, Inc., in place of internal difference and merge tools.
Complete Solution—All functional groups involved in the development and maintenance process can benefit from CA Harvest SCM, not only programmers. CA Harvest SCM can control the entire development process, including problem tracking, change management, builds, testing, quality assurance, documentation, and release. Extensive management reporting capabilities support auditing functions throughout the entire process.

Sample Software Development Process

This sample lifecycle presents a typical, simplified, software development process. The team that uses it consists of two developers, one quality assurance (QA) engineer, and one development manager. The software application being worked on is already in the market, so the purpose of this project is to support maintenance work on the current release of that software.

The five phases (states) in the development process are as follows:

Assign—Various personnel such as QA engineers, customer support personnel, and the development manager, create modification requests (packages). The development manager assigns a priority to each request and passes the request to the development team (promotes the request packages to the Coding state).
Coding—Developers determine what code must be modified. Using the packages, the developers check out the code to their respective client computers, make changes, and check in the code. When all code affected by the request is modified, the development manager approves the packages and promotes them to the Test state.
Test—The QA engineer reviews the requests and tests the code to verify that it works according to the requests. If errors are found in the code, the engineer returns the packages to the developers (demotes it to the Coding state). If no errors are found, the engineer promotes the packages to the Release state.
Release—Code that is ready to be released resides here. Packages are not demoted from this state. When the code is ready to be released a type of picture named a snapshot is taken of the code that is included in the release.
Snapshots—All snapshots reside here. Snapshots make it easy to go back and look at the content of any release.

More information:

Working Views and the Baseline

Projects and Lifecycles

States and Views

Processes

Package Movement Through the Lifecycle

Snapshot Views

Audience

This guide presents CA Harvest SCM concepts that help you understand how to perform administrative tasks, such as designing and creating a lifecycle. Step-by-step procedures guide you through the tasks you must perform to set up and maintain CA Harvest SCM.

The following persons may have specific roles or combined roles during a project lifecycle:

Administrators use the information in this guide to create lifecycles, maintain projects, and administer CA Harvest SCM users. For example, information in this guide helps administrators design a lifecycle and custom form types.
Database administrators use the information in this guide to help administer CA Harvest SCM database tables. For example, information in this guide helps database administrators use the archive function to move data from the CA Harvest SCM database tables to another location for archive purposes.
Build managers use the information in this guide to build applications from source code. For example, information in this guide helps build managers manage reference directories on multiple operating systems.

The Administrator Guide benefits anyone who wants to understand how lifecycles and processes work in CA Harvest SCM.

Administrative Tasks

A software development process is a structure (lifecycle) imposed on the development of a software product. The lifecycle that your site uses determines the tasks or activities that take place during the software development process to control changes that are made to software throughout the lifecycle.

The administrator sets up the lifecycle and must perform some tasks before users can access and use CA Harvest SCM to manage their changes. Such tasks include setting up user groups, defining the lifecycle that you want to use, setting up the repository, and setting access permissions. Administrators use the Administrator application to perform these tasks and later to administer and maintain the software development process.

Before You Begin

You use the Administrator application to set up and administer CA Harvest SCM projects and lifecycles. Some setup tasks must be completed before you can use the Administrator application effectively. Depending on your knowledge and responsibilities, you may be able to perform some or all these tasks yourself. A system administrator may need to complete some of them.

Before you begin to set up CA Harvest SCM, do the following:

Install CA Harvest SCM on both the server and the client.
Verify that the relational database is running.
Verify that the CA Harvest SCM broker process is running and a server process is available.
Know the login credentials for the initial CA Harvest SCM user that was created during installation.
Note: For information about Steps 1 through 4, see the Implementation Guide.
(Optional, but recommended) Read the following chapters:
- "Understanding CA Harvest SCM Basics" in the User Guide.
- "Understanding Versions" in the User Guide.
- "Understanding Projects and Lifecycles" in this guide.
Becoming familiar with this material, can help you design, implement, and manage your projects and lifecycles.

Log In to the Administrator Application

The Administrator application lets you use CA Harvest SCM functions that are suited to CA Harvest SCM administrators, build engineers, and other administrators and development managers.

Follow these steps:

Select CA Harvest SCM Administrator from the program group.
The CA Harvest SCM login dialog appears.
Enter your user name, password, and the broker location.
(Optional) Select the Save Password check box to retain the password you enter for your next CA Harvest SCM session.
Click OK.
The main window shows the Administrator application, which provides you with access to all administrative functions.