Integrity 10.7: Shared Sandboxes deprecated

[ssaul]

The release information for Integrity 10.7 shows that shared sandboxes are deprecated.

Unfortunately, we are using shared sandboxes in the following scenario:

- Several software developers create software and put it into a shared sandbox residing on a network drive

- Various guys in testing field and production (without access to Integrity Source) use the software to flash devices.

With the Sandbox on the network drive, we always know if the server contents are the same as the network drive contents.

We really don't know how to do this in the future, if we ever want to update to >=10.7.

We know that the existing shared sandbox solution has its pitfalls, but it worked for us.

Eliminating an existing feature is not good practice and not very customer friendly.

If we cannot update, we do not really need a maintenance contract....

So any suggestion for a workaround?

[mrump]

As far as I see it, you use a Shared sandbox only to indicate a change in the directory's content. Is that correct?

Your developers copy some change into that sandbox from wherever and the "working file difference" in the sandbox shows that there is something new.

So what's next? Your testers flash their devices and verify the new software and use the shared sandbox for a checkin if the test succeeded?

How do you make sure the sandboxes content did not change twice in the meantime?

How can you tell what source code was used generate the flash files in your sandbox?

[ssaul]

Matthias,

we use a shared sandbox to track and detect changes to the fileservers content.

Every change on a file is done from a developer via the sandbox.

He copies the file to the fileserver and does a checkin or add - so no working file difference after that.

A working file difference would only appear if someone changed the file contents without tracking this change to the integrity server (via checkin/add).

This shared sandbox is only an interface to production.

Our software build process is handled on the developers workstation in an extra sandbox.

[pmerkle]

When you use the tool Jenkins with the PTC Integrity Plugin you can retrive SI members (Files) from the Integrity Database without using a sandbox.

[ssaul]

Thanks for your hint, but we do not use Jenkins (yet).

I think we could also use a server side trigger that is executed on member checkin and member add that copies files on the fileserver.

But this still does not show if the fileserver files are okay, valid and complete as we had with a sandbox.