Freeze (software engineering)

Last updated

In software engineering, a freeze is a point in time in the development process after which the rules for making changes to the source code or related resources become more strict, or the period during which those rules are applied. [1] A freeze helps move the project forward towards a release or the end of an iteration by reducing the scale or frequency of changes, and may be used to help meet a roadmap.

Contents

The exact rules depend on the type of freeze and the particular development process in use; for example, they may include only allowing changes which fix bugs, or allowing changes only after thorough review by other members of the development team. They may also specify what happens if a change contrary to the rules is required, such as restarting the freeze period. Common types of freezes are:

Implementations

In development environments using version control, the use of branching can alleviate delays in development caused by freezes. For example, a project may have a "stable" branch from which new versions of the software are released, and a separate "development" branch in which the developers add new code. The effect of a freeze is then to prevent promotion of some or all changes from the development branch to the stable branch. In other words, the freeze applies only to the stable branch, and developers can continue their work on the development branch.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Debugger</span> Source-level debugger

The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, Assembly, C, C++, D, Fortran, Go, Objective-C, OpenCL C, Modula-2, Pascal, Rust, and partially others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Software bug</span> Error, flaw, failure, or fault in a computer program or system

A software bug is an error, flaw or fault in the design, development, or operation of computer software that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. The process of finding and correcting bugs is termed "debugging" and often uses formal techniques or tools to pinpoint bugs. Since the 1950s, some computer systems have been designed to deter, detect or auto-correct various computer bugs during operations.

In computing, an optimizing compiler is a compiler that tries to minimize or maximize some attributes of an executable computer program. Common requirements are to minimize a program's execution time, memory footprint, storage size, and power consumption.

In software engineering, version control is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections of information. Version control is a component of software configuration management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iterative and incremental development</span> Development methodology

Iterative and incremental development is any combination of both iterative design or iterative method and incremental build model for development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Software release life cycle</span> Sum of the phases of development and maturity for computer software

The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product. It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the final version, or "gold", is released to the public.

A patch is a set of changes to a computer program or its supporting data designed to update, fix, or improve it. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, with such patches usually being called bugfixes or bug fixes. Patches are often written to improve the functionality, usability, or performance of a program. The majority of patches are provided by software vendors for operating system and application updates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Pascal</span> Free compiler and IDE for Pascal and ObjectPascal

Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is a compiler for the closely related programming-language dialects Pascal and Object Pascal. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License, with exception clauses that allow static linking against its runtime libraries and packages for any purpose in combination with any other software license.

Hard coding is the software development practice of embedding data directly into the source code of a program or other executable object, as opposed to obtaining the data from external sources or generating it at runtime.

Iterative design is a design methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a product or process. Based on the results of testing the most recent iteration of a design, changes and refinements are made. This process is intended to ultimately improve the quality and functionality of a design. In iterative design, interaction with the designed system is used as a form of research for informing and evolving a project, as successive versions, or iterations of a design are implemented.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Continuous integration</span> Software development practice based on frequent submission of granular changes

In software engineering, continuous integration (CI) is the practice of merging all developers' working copies to a shared mainline several times a day. Nowadays it is typically implemented in such a way that it triggers an automated build with testing. Grady Booch first proposed the term CI in his 1991 method, although he did not advocate integrating several times a day. Extreme programming (XP) adopted the concept of CI and did advocate integrating more than once per day – perhaps as many as tens of times per day.

Software rot is either a slow deterioration of software quality over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusable, or in need of upgrade. This is not a physical phenomenon; the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being responsive and updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Application Suite</span> Discontinued Internet suite

The Mozilla Application Suite is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It was based on the source code of Netscape Communicator. The development was spearheaded by the Mozilla Organization from 1998 to 2003, and by the Mozilla Foundation from 2003 to 2006.

Open-source software development (OSSD) is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its source code under an open-source license to study, change, and improve its design. Examples of some popular open-source software products are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android, LibreOffice and the VLC media player.

Branching, in version control and software configuration management, is the duplication of an object under version control. Each object can thereafter be modified separately and in parallel so that the objects become different. In this context the objects are called branches. The users of the version control system can branch any branch.

Extreme programming (XP) is an agile software development methodology used to implement software projects. This article details the practices used in this methodology. Extreme programming has 12 practices, grouped into four areas, derived from the best practices of software engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EiffelStudio</span> Development environment

EiffelStudio is a development environment for the Eiffel programming language developed and distributed by Eiffel Software.

In software engineering, a software development process is a process of planning and managing software development. It typically involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design and/or product management. It is also known as a software development life cycle (SDLC). The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extreme programming</span> Software development methodology

Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.

This article discusses a set of tactics useful in software testing. It is intended as a comprehensive list of tactical approaches to Software Quality Assurance (more widely colloquially known as Quality Assurance and general application of the test method.

References

  1. Mascitelli, Ronald (2007-01-01). The Lean Product Development Guidebook: Everything Your Design Team Needs to Improve Efficiency and Slash Time-to-market. Technology Perspectives. p. 111. ISBN   9780966269734.