Software Management Of Configurations

SCM is management assisted with software tools. Is this a restriction? It is a self-fulfilling prophecy to answer no. The level of management attainable through SCM should be unreachable in any other way, inescapable. The reasoning is that what is allowed by SCM is collaborative management, i.e. management of complexities beyond the reach of any individual.

The tools do bring restrictions: those related to their idiosyncrasy. E.g. ClearCase applies only to files (and directories). Files are the atom on which is built ClearCase genericity. This is a restriction when it comes to managing a database (or an image, as in typical Smalltalk development environments).

There is here a paradox, and a circle. Since SCM is tool aided management, its kind of genericity depends on something specific to the SCM tool. It doesn't make much sense to speak of generic SCM, abstracting the tool away. At least doing so would drop us back to pre-SCM management, which is unacceptably weaker. -- MarcGirod

From SoftwareConfigurationManagement