Plastic SCM Professional

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A complete SCM (Software Configuration Management) solution designed for task based development, with branching, full project's structure versioning, distributed system, multiserver support, security system based on ACLs and more. Plastic SCM Professional is a multiplatform (Windows, Linux, Unix and MAC) version control system that provides full integration with the most widely used IDEs as well and task tracking tools, and contains accurate importers for SourceSafe, CVS and Subversion; providing quick transition from these environments. Plastic SCM Professional can be configured to work with Firebird, MySQL or SQL Server database backends. Plastic SCM Professional Edition provides enterprise features such as configurable workspaces through selectors, integration with Active Directory or LDAP to enforce security policies on repositories, support for an unlimited number of users and distributed system. One Year of full support with access to all new releases within a year is included with the Professional Edition.

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Plastic SCM Professional V2.7

Plastic SCM Professional - Full Support Renewal

Our prices include ComponentSource technical support and, for most downloadable products, an online backup and a FREE upgrade to the new version if it is released within 30 days of your purchase.  All sales are made on our standard Terms and Conditions and subject to our Return Policy. Please contact us if you require any licensing option not listed above including volume licensing and previous versions.

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What’s new in Plastic SCM V2.7.x?

• Mac OS X Plastic Client & Server installer.
• Xmerge (Cross-merge). It is just a feature that helps developers merging code that has been moved and modified in parallel. This is very likely to happen when you refactor your code.
• Implemented a Visual Studio 2005/2008 package to integrate Plastic SCM client. Now, Visual Studio IDE can show Items, Branches, Changesets, Branch Explorer, Labels and repositories. All operations from context menus are available.
• Added functionality to Eclipse plugin to branch, merge from branch, merge from label, view changesets.
• Support for the sandbox branching workflow. The sandbox branching workflow requires that all developers work in their own branch.
• Implemented a new annotate (blame) command. This command shows the author and the revision information in-line for the specified files. Each line of text is annotated at the beginning, with the author (username) and the revision number for the last change to that line.
• Now annotate command is compatible with tortoiseblame
• Replica tracking. All replicated objects in the data have information about the replication server source. This information is shown in the properties panel for each object in the GUI tool.
• Replication for Distributed Development Improvements:
• GUI Replication: Implemented all replication options in the GUI. There is an extended branch menu with all replication options.
• Replication process is cancellable.
• Now you can browse remote repositories. This is useful for some replication scenarios.
• Server profiles. A server profile system has is now available. You can define several server connections and use them to specify a source and destination for the replication.
• Implemented a mechanism to filter out unwanted files and folders from the private items view with a list of patterns (wildcards are allowed).
• Added before-checkout and before-checkin triggers on client side.
• Disabled autoscalling in mono distribution for a correct visualization on non-windows platforms.
• Implemented a configuration file named "writable.conf" to keep files as non-readonly on update and checkin operations.
• Added help links on GUI views. They are linked to web documentation

What’s new in Plastic SCM V2.5.x?

• New: Smart Branches system: This system allows users to implement any working pattern, as the new branches "remember" their starting point, whenever a user switches to a branch he does not have to set its base.
• New: Attributes system which allows users to include additional information to any system object.
• New: Triggers system, which allows the execution of user commands for tasks such as enforcing branch creation policies or creating formatting rules. “After” and “before” event triggers automatically initiate actions when the following events occur:
  • A workspace is created
  • A workspace selector is set
  • Items are added
  • Check in or check out operations are done
  • An attribute is created
  • A branch is created
  • A label is created
  • A repository is created
  • A workspace is updated
• New on Plastic SCM extensions:
  • “Task on changeset” mode supported on Plastic SCM extensions
  • Extensions enhancement working on Visual Studio, allowing the check in comments added on VS to be seen on the task associated on the task tracking tool.
  • Trac Extension: SSPI and SSL connections supported.
  • Bugzilla Extension: A Plastic SCM branch cannot be created if the Bugzilla extension is active and no task has been previously created in Bugzilla.
  • DevTrac integration improved: tasks are linked from the branch explorer, not only from the branch view.
• New: Revert links on the 3D tree are now shown in red, different from the green merge links.
• New: Smart branch system documentation included on the user manual.
• New: “Differences” option on Changed Item´s View.
• New: The GUI merge dialogue allows selecting both source and destination contributors.
• New: Automatic “switch to branch” from the GUI, the selector only modifies the branches selected
• New: When switching the workspace to a branch, the GUI displays a message to confirm the operation.
• New: The items view is displayed by default
• New: “Find” button on the differences and merge options included.
• New: Attribute control, allowing changing its value, apply changes or deleting the attribute
• New: Branch explorer enhancement: its buttons can be used before the whole branch explorer is loaded.
• New: cm shelve and cm cat commands implemented
• New: CVS importer enhancement
• New: Installer enhancement
• New: Eclipse integration enhancement.
• New: Improved performance on add operation, “check in” and “check out” operations when executed in blocks

What's New in Plastic SCM 2.0?

• Distributed System: As distributed environments are becoming a must for software development, coordinating the efforts of development teams is one of the biggest challenges faced by today’s companies. Depending on each organization needs and their structure, the most suitable SCM working pattern will be chosen. Plastic SCM now supports both centralized and distributed work, including the traditional distributed method, multi-site and off-line. Having a server at each location will solve the problem of slow or unreliable internet connection between sites. The method used on the following figure resembles a traditional distributed method implemented with master/slave based products: both servers have an exact replica of branch /main and the new code generated will be in one server at the time and they will, periodically, replicate their work on the other server. You can find more information at the “Distributed Guide” from the Evals&Downloads section.
• Multi-serve Support: The possibility that Plastic SCM introduces of having multiple servers at the same time provides an important performance increase and higher configuration flexibility. A Plastic SCM server manages two different concepts: repositories and workspaces. A repository is a database where all the versioned objects are stored. A workspace is an area in the developer’s disk where a copy of a project stored in a repository is downloaded so that the developer can work with it locally. In the default configuration a Plastic Server manages both repositories and workspaces, but the system is flexible enough to allow different layouts. Different repository and workspace servers can be configured to cooperate enhancing overall system performance, reducing network usage, distributing storage and balancing CPU load. You can find more information on this feature if you have a look at chapter 6 on the Admin Guide, both on the Evals&Downloads section.
• Code Review Tool: The code review system eases performing code reviews. Whether you're doing formal inspections or just informal walkthroughs, this new Plastic feature will help you. We all know even an informal walkthrough or just reviewing you colleague's code can make a huge different in defect removal and hence in final's product quality. Users are normally so reluctant to run such reviews because of the lack of the proper tools:This new integrated capability will make its own contribution to spread a best practice like code reviewing.
• Statistics Tool: Plastic SCM statistics tool shows the daily changes made by users on each item; this information can be also retrieved from the query system but the statistic menu offers graphically displayed results, so you can learn about your company’s development with just a glance! The application shows the changes that each of the systems users have done and which items have been changed, which allows you to see which are the most active users or which items carry a higher workload. And furthermore, the application is interactive; whenever a user is selected his workload is divided into as many parts as items that the user has changed. And on the item’s side the changes done by that particular user on each of the items is highlighted, showing the items on which the user invests more or less time. The same interaction can be observed on the item’s side: when an item is selected, it is divided into as many parts as users who have modified it and on the users graphic the changes done on that item will be highlighted.
•  Subversion importer: Plastic SCM previous versions already included an importer for VSS and CVS repositories. It has now been extended for Subversion. You can have a look at how to use the importer at the “Importers Guide” in the Evals&Downloads section.

Plastic SCM 2.0 Enhancements:

• GUI
• Query System
• Eclipse Integration
• Branch Explorer
• Linux Support

What's New Plastic SCM V1.5?

• Query System:The new Plastic SCM release introduces the new query system. The query system is the mechanism provided by Plastic to search data inside the different repositories in a customizable way. Using the query system it is possible to track which changes have been made on a given time frame, who is the owner, which branches are involved and even which labels. The Plastic SCM query system allows users to create advanced reports to highlight system usage, project statistics, detect usage patterns or simply monitor changes. All through a simplified and familiar SQL-like interface, and XML result sets.
• Improved Security System: The Plastic SCM security system has been present since the first official release, and the new 1.5 version introduces new enhancements to ease the enforcement of development policies. The new capabilities allow the definition of customized access rights to directory trees (and still being able to customize the repository and branch hierarchy) greatly simplifying the security management. A new type of special user is introduced, the owner, allowing administrators and SCM managers to set special permissions to the objects’ creators. Now defining multi-group strategies will be much easier, being able to define whether belonging to several groups should turn out into a less or more restricted behaviour. Setting up the SCM security both to prevent unwanted access or to enforced policies, is just a click away with Plastic SCM.
• Branch explorer: The branch explorer is one of the most anticipated features in the new Plastic SCM release. Now developers will be able to visualize the whole project evolution using this new capability, which is a new step ahead, together with the 3D version tree, in SCM data representation. The branch explorer opens a new world of possibilities for the upcoming Plastic SCM releases and will be tuned and extended taking into account customers’ feedback. The branch explorer will play a key role in the near Plastic SCM future, providing a simplified and powerful interface to control the whole development process.
• Merge system improvements: The merge system has been greatly improved for release 1.5. The Plastic SCM merge support was already one of the most powerful merge system available, implementing features like merge tracking, true rename (required for refactoring support) and an optimized contributor calculation. During the last months the development team has worked in merge performance and implementing an even better renaming support.
• SQL Server support: Plastic SCM is a new generation system and hence uses a RDBMS as data backend, which can be configured by the user. The first Plastic SCM official release only implemented Firebird (http://www.firebirdsql.org) as data backend, which is a strong and fast open source database. Plastic SCM will continue including Firebird as recommended database but SQL Server (2005 and higher) support has been introduced to adapt to customers’ current IT options.
• PowerBuilder integration: Plastic SCM implements a SCC compatible plugin which provides full Visual Studio integration. A number of IDE are compatible with SCC and the 1.5 release has been specifically tuned to include PowerBuilder as one of the supported platforms.
• CruiseControl support: Build tools like CruiseControl are a perfect companion for version control systems like Plastic. The release 1.5 is integrated with CruiseControl 2.7, allowing users to automate build and release tasks both with .NET and Java.
• JDeveloper plugin: The Plastic 1.5 release introduces the new JDeveloper plugin. Now both JDeveloper and Eclipse developers can benefit from a full featured integration which will boost their productivity working together with Plastic.

List of Plastic SCM Professional Features:

Task based development

Plastic SCM is the best solution for Task Based Development because of its advanced branching model; branching is one of the core Plastic SCM capabilities, and Branch Inheritance Technology is the key to maximize team productivity, easing integrations, and providing full traceability of the development. New visualizations provide the level of detail needed by the every team member, from a global view of the project status offered by, to the single item detail displayed on the 3D Version Tree.

To perform really branching, a good merging mechanism is required, and merge tracking is the key of the process. Each time a merge is done, a link is created between the involved revisions. The link is not only important to illustrate the process (to be displayed on a version tree), but used internally by Plastic SCM to take the number of manual merge conflicts to the minimum. The overall result is a significant reduction of the time that developers spend on integrations. Find more details on the advantages of Branch Inheritance technology for parallel development on the whitepaper “Parallel development with Plastic SCM” in the Evals&Downloads section.

Plastic SCM offers new visualization formulas to display repository data, increasing developer productivity by providing the right view for each task.

Security and Authentication

PlasticSCM Professional supports the concept of Access Control Lists (ACLs) for every single object defined in the system. This gives companies total freedom to choose any security policy, not being restricted by tool limitations.

If yours is an open environment, then probably security is not a big concern. When a development group becomes a team setting barriers with security is not a good idea. Still, there are always certain assets to protect, depending on the different people accessing your system.<

There are also many projects in which having such an open set up is not a good idea: staff mobility, big amount of developers, junior staff, among others, require a more secured SCM deployment.

That's why in Plastic SCM Professional the security mechanism allows full customization. Everything is possible, from disabling security or giving default access, to fine grane tuning on a per-object basis.

For companies involved in quality validation processes like CMMi, it is often required to provide a given level of access control for project assets, which can be easily implemented with Plastic SCM.

Transparent integration 

Plastic SCM integrates with most modern user directory technologies out of the box, providing a very fast setup and having little or no maintenance requirements

Supported integrations are:

 Active Directory integration

Provided that clients and servers are inside a Windows Active Directory domain, no questions are asked. Server will get known users from the domain, and clients will transparently validate using Windows integrated authentication against it.

LDAP authentication

 Two different modes are available. First one allows Unix based clients, or even Windows ones outside the domain, to be authenticated against a PlasticSCM server getting its data from an Active Directory. Native LDAP, on the other hand, allows full authentication against regular LDAP servers that can be running, for instance, on Solaris.

Name authentication 

In this mode the Plastic SCM server will retrieve the users from the machine where it is running. Provided that the network set up makes the same users available to both the client and the server, the mechanism will work. This method can be used for NIS based networks.

Name + ID authentication 

Same as the Name mode, but user id data is also considered. This is the recommended mode for NIS-based networks.

Query System

Plastic SCM already introduced the query system on previous releases but it has been extended on the 2.0. The query system is the mechanism provided by Plastic to search data inside the different repositories in a customizable way. Using the query system it is possible to track which changes have been made on a given time frame, who is the owner, which branches are involved and even which labels.

The Plastic SCM query system allows users to create advanced reports to highlight system usage, project statistics, detect usage patterns or simply monitor changes. All through a simplified and familiar SQL-like interface, and XML result sets.

Branch Explorer 

With Plastic SCM enhanced branch explorer users will be able to have on display the whole evolution of the development. It displays branches in a timeline, together with the relations that link them, giving a rapid understanding of what gets delivered to the customer. It provides a simplified and powerful interface to control the whole development process providing with a global view of the status of the project, including all branches and their relations: merge links, labels, parent links and changesets. The view is customizable so users can choose to see either of these relations or all of them depending on their needs. 

3D Version Tree 

The version tree focuses on the historic details of a single item. It allows developers to trace why changes were introduced, and integrators to solve merge and promotion issues more efficiently. You can have a look at Plastic SCM 3D version tree from the Screenshot Gallery.

Differences and merge

Plastic SCM provides several differences and merge tools to accommodate different kinds of digital assets. While source code managing tools are most widely used, other formats like images and Microsoft Word are also supported.

· Code differences. Classical code file differences have been enhanced applying syntax highlight. This makes the code easier to read and follow. Soft gradients and carefully chosen color schemes to display differences also contribute to an overall more comfortable experience.

· Image differences. Supporting two modes, side by side or blended, where both images are blended together making it very easy to spot differences. A slide bar controls the level of transparency applied to the images.

· Code merge. The 3-way merge is always a complicated process. Codice applied the same visualization technology previously used for differences, this time a step beyond. The merge algorithms are highly optimized to resolve automatically as many conflicts as possible, and even for those not automatic, try to suggest the best possible solution before hand.

IDE and task tracking integrations: 

Plastic for Eclipse

 Plastic SCM integration with Eclipse allows developers to carry out any kind of source control operation from their development environment. This is an easy way to improve productivity as every part of your development can be achieved from the same tool. From Eclipse, developers are able to keep the whole project clearly under strict control from the source control. You can easily do any kind of operations implemented by Plastic SCM. such as checkouts, checkins, adding new elements, checking differences with previous versions, consulting their development’s history, obtaining versions…they are all within easy and fast reach. Refactor support is also available in our Eclipse integration. Developers can also manage the project’s structure from their development environment thanks to renaming and moving files and folders operations.

Starting to work with Plastic SCM for Eclipse is very simple. You would only have to create a new project and share it all to the source control; it would all be ready to start working. Plastic SCM is designed for developers to spend their time working exclusively on development, and not having to learn how to use new tools. It also provides useful functionalities in order to increase their development’s productivity. The integration supports fully management of branches. Isolated development using branches allows each developer to do any kind of changes on his code without interfering with the rest of the team, as well as the others´ development does not interfere with his changes.  Together with our advanced branching and the possibility of always going back to a previous version, both trust on your work and productivity are increased.

Plastic SCM for Eclipse integration is available for the following platforms:

• Eclipse version 2.1.2
• Eclipse 3.1
• Eclipse 3.2

Plastic SCM for Visual Studio

 Plastic SCM integration with Visual Studio allows developers to perform common version control operations from their development environment, making SCM transparent to the developer. This would bring an increase on their productivity as every task would be done within the same tool.

 From Visual Studio developers can keep under control the whole project working transparently on their source code. Operations such as check out and check in, adding new elements, the ability to see the differences with previous versions, checking the history of the project, obtaining different versions…they are all easily available.

Furthermore, from Visual Studio 2005 developers are able to manage the projects´ structure from their development environment due to the ability of renaming and moving both files and folders. Traditional SCM products do not support this kind of operations or are very slow and difficult to manage. Plastic SCM, by its full project’s structure versioning and its fully integration with Visual Studio, allows moving files or folders and always keeps the elements history.</p><p>Starting to work with Visual Studio and Plastic SCM is very easy. You would only have to create a new project and add it to the source control so it will be ready to start working. Plastic SCM is meant to allow the developer to spend his time only doing his job and not having to learn how to use new tools. It also provides useful functionalities in order to increase the development productivity.</p><p>Isolated development on branches allows each developer to make changes on his code without interfering with the rest of the team and they do not interfere with his work, so it provides parallel development, the possibility of always returning to a previously modified version and it increases both stability and productivity.

Plastic SCM integration with Visual Studio is available for:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 +
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
• Microsoft Access

Plastic SCM for JDeveloper

The Plastic 1.5 release introduces the new JDeveloper plugin. Now both JDeveloper and Eclipse developers can benefit from a full featured integration which will boost their productivity working together with Plastic

Plastic SCM Professional is a source code version control system for Windows and Linux developers, offering branching inheritance and full structure versioning (for both files and directories). It provides full integration with Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs, and contains accurate importers for SourceSafe and CVS, providing quick transition from these environments. Plastic SCM Professional Edition is multiplatform and provides enterprise features such as configurable workspaces through selectors, integration with Active Directory or LDAP to enforce security policies on repositories and support for an unlimited number of users

Plastic SCM provides strong version control for source code and any digital asset involved in software development, dramatically reducing the cost of rework performed by developers.

Task tracking tool integrations

A development process always involves a lot of different people in many different roles: developers, testers, managers…coordinating their work is a very complex task and many teams spend too much time in meetings to decide how they are going to comply with their work instead of just doing it!

The best solution for avoiding time loss and improving your team’s productivity is integrating your Plastic SCM with a task tracking tool.

Advantages of using Plastic SCM integrated with a task tracking system:

• Improved cross-team coordination
• Reliable project status
• Enhance visibility
• Accurate Communication

Plastic SCM integrations easies your development to a higher level: through the check outs view you can easily see in which branch/task is every check out located! This option does highly improve your task tracking.

You can tie different enterprise processes together: a support issue can be passed to your defect management tool, ensuring that customer-reported defects are handled efficiently and solved quickly.

Plastic provides the maximum control and customization, offering the flexibility to choose the best lifecycle tool for your company requirements, instead of being trapped by an imposed tool, and you will not be required any kind of installation on your client machines.

Plastic offers your team a wide range of possibilities:

• JIRA
• DevTrack
• OnTime
• VersionOne
• Trac
• Bugzilla
• Mantis

Importers from other tools 

Plastic SCM provides an tool to import your CVS, VSS and now also, Subversion repository into Plastic in just a few minutes.

CruiseControl support

Build tools like CruiseControl are a perfect companion for version control systems like Plastic. The release 1.5 is integrated with CruiseControl 2.7, allowing users to automate build and release tasks both with .NET and Java.

PowerBuilder integration

Plastic SCM implements a SCC compatible plugin which provides full Visual Studio integration. A number of IDE are compatible with SCC and the 1.5 release has been specifically tuned to include PowerBuilder as one of the supported platforms.

Configurable Database Backend 

Plastic SCM uses relational database management systems for that purpose. Relying on those systems has many benefits like having fully transacted operations (ensuring data integrity), performance or well defined backup and restore mechanism.

Plastic SCM can be configured to work with Firebird, SQL Server and MySQL database back ends, each of them having different features and benefits

Being able to work with different database back ends is not only good as added value for clients, it is good for software design. Our datalayer is currently ready to support other database systems like Oracle or MySQL.

Multiplatform support 

Plastic SCM Professional provides support for widely used operating systems. Common scenarios involving linux servers and windows clients are supported by Plastic SCM with ease, allowing for better server utilization and less maintenance, contributing to an overall reduced cost of deployment.

Professional Edition Supported server platforms: Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista, Linux and MacOS.

Professional Edition Supported Client Platforms:  Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista, Linux, Solaris 9 and higher, MacOS