Parallel Product Development

After releasing a new version of the product, the development effort doesn't stop. The product will advance towards the next release while a separate effort will be made to maintain the current release and fix the issues found after the product is installed in the production environments. These efforts cannot be conducted on the same code base. They have to be conducted in parallel. This is where we introduce codelines.

Codelines

The codeline is the basic concept that represents the progression of the set of source files and other resources that make up the software product. It represents the development evolution across time, having a continuous history.

The first codeline is created when the development process is started and the initial files are added under source code management. This codeline is called the mainline or trunk.

If the mainline is used as the current development codeline it is also referred to as the development line.

In the OrbitalHotel example...