Sub.: FPD25 App Modification Versioning/Management between multiple sites.

Hi All,

I have an app for which there are multiple clients. There are times when a change ordered by client A, is later installed for client B. Now this new code breaks and the client B also suffers unnecessarily. Now the thing is, changes made for client A when successful will be loved by client B. Client B just does not want to have it until it is bug-free.

This is a simple situation, in reality there may be a couple of different changes being made for different clients concurrently, in the end all of them will receive all these changes, but in the interim till a given changes thread is not bug free I do not want to pass-on these changes to other clients who have not ordered the changes. Yet I have to generate builds for deployment as well as develop and fix as required. How do I avoid such a situation?

Currently I have one directory for development, here I do the R&D. There is another directory for deployment where my last release build is stored and from this I generate the distribution disks and pass on to the clients. Thus I am able to avoid atlease one level of this problem. But when there are things that break long term, there comes a time when almost all clients have it and all of them go down together.

Any changes I make, down the line I will want to inlcude them in the main stream app. I cannot maintain multiple development copies and how can I manage so many and how to merge them in the end. Documentation is scant if at all available. There are also times when a change is mandatorily required to be done for all clients concurrently.

At times I have a deployment build ready and under the development directory I am making heavy changes, which, until completed cannot be relesed. Now a client comes along with a serious problem (see my original problem above <g>) which I *have* to fix and my hands are tied due to the current changes that are being made.

Now what happens is that I will convience my client that due to such circumstances the fix will be delayed for a couple of days and the goodness of the client is that he agrees with it. Now due to time-constraints (he still want it yesterday and calls me up everyday for it), the current un-stoppable work may suffer in quality if a few corners are cut or forgotten, just because the important fix is to be relesed and delivered to all affected.

This starts another cycle of the problem as I have had to compulsorily deliver a change due to a required fix before I was personally satified with the quality of the change.

Can anyone suggest a way to go about this or is anyone facing such problems and has solved it or atleast has an idea to solve it, anything, anything, just let me know.

If I have not been able to clarify my thoughts please let me know and I'll explain what I meant.