Exactly what is Alfresco???

[bruce]

Hi…

We're looking for an app that can be used to manage code/applications being developed by distributed teams. We're not really looking to create one off, templated web sites, so we're not looking for a typo3/mambo/drupal kind of app. Rather, we're looking for something that's similar to Clearcase/Perforce/SourceSafe, were we can perform various software functions…

We'll need to:
Perform Check-In/Out
Assign User Access Rights/Roles
Maintain History
Create Projects
Version Control
Track who performed what actions for a given file/project
Enforce Security for Users and Files
Manage Software Applications (Source Code, Build Functions, Etc…)
Manage Web Site Applications
Control Source Files (Source, DB Schema, Media Files, Etc..)
Search Through File Functionality
External API functionality
Automatically Build/Deploy Application to specific environment
Workflow functionality
Event Driven notification to user(s) for given file action

In looking through the site docs/google, I'm not sure exactly where Alfresco fits…

So, does Alfresco provide this kind of functionality????

Thanks

-Bruce
bedouglas@earthlink.net

[gavinc]

Alfresco is currently focused towards document management as opposed to source code management.

We do provide a lot of the functionality on your list now but we will be providing more SVN/clearcase/sourcesafe like functionality with our web content management release later this year.

[kvc]

Hi…

We're looking for an app that can be used to manage code/applications being developed by distributed teams. We're not really looking to create one off, templated web sites, so we're not looking for a typo3/mambo/drupal kind of app. Rather, we're looking for something that's similar to Clearcase/Perforce/SourceSafe, were we can perform various software functions…

We'll need to:
Perform Check-In/Out
Assign User Access Rights/Roles
Maintain History
Create Projects
Version Control
Track who performed what actions for a given file/project
Enforce Security for Users and Files
Manage Software Applications (Source Code, Build Functions, Etc…)
Manage Web Site Applications
Control Source Files (Source, DB Schema, Media Files, Etc..)
Search Through File Functionality
External API functionality
Automatically Build/Deploy Application to specific environment
Workflow functionality
Event Driven notification to user(s) for given file action

In looking through the site docs/google, I'm not sure exactly where Alfresco fits…

So, does Alfresco provide this kind of functionality????

Thanks

-Bruce
bedouglas@earthlink.net

As part of our WCM roadmap, we are added in Subversion-like semantics to the Alfresco repository.  This will include support for branching, merging, snapshotting, and change set isolation and context preview through a new, advanced capability called layers.  The goal is to support concurrent development by distributed teams of complex, dynamic sites - not just the content, but all site resources including application code, config files, and more.  For any given project, you can set up and configure multiple sandboxes wherein you can independently preview different change sets in the context of the entire website / web app and manage independent promotion paths - perhaps to separate test sandboxes, QA sandboxes, staging sandboxes and more - either on the current Alfresco server or (future) a second Alfresco server instance.

I highly encourage you to read more detail on improvements we are adding for WCM.  I believe we may be a perfect fit for what you are looking for.

Kevin

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/New_Web_Content_Management_Plan

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Collaborative_Content_Production

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Versioned_Directories

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Transparent_Layers

[jawz]

I see that this post is 4 years old now, so I might be out of luck.  Has anyone tried (or is anyone currently using) Alfresco as a source code management tool instead of something like Clearcase or Perforce?  Some of the features were set to be in a release for WCM- such as branching, versioning, check-in/out, etc and I'd like to know if anyone is using it as a source code management tool and, if it is working, what advantages/disadvantages have you found?

Thanks

[cliffords]

Funny. That's why I signed on. To see how diverse the project might become.

Management technologies seem to be really niche based at first and after adding a diversity of options/functionality they suddenly get picked up by other sectors for different applications.

How has Alfresco matured? Any chance it could open up towards other uses?

[mrogers]

Yes, alfresco has matured over the years.  However what it is NOT is a software version control system.   So your use-case is to develop software then use a specialised  software version control system like SVN or ClearCase.    The alfresco source code itself is in SVN.

Yes Alfresco has has some simple version control like behaviour, especially WCM, however its aimed at document management and lacks some of the finer (and more complicated) details of version control such as conflict resolution and merging.

[cliffords]

That's strange, there are no conflict resolution/merging needs within the scope of document management? Seems odd as that was one of the points where I expected some crossover?

In both application development, and document creation, I'd love the functionality to compare changes over time, contrasting what was done, which is core to conflict resolution/merging forked projects?

[mrogers]

Yes, we discuss the need for merging from time to time.   Its something we will tackle eventually.

However
   a) it gets complicated quickly.      For example I can't imagine your average buisness user (or some software developers I know) using a version control system like ClearCase comfortably.  
   b) alfresco deals with more than just text files so how do you diff or merge a sound for example?   Yes we could provide some sort of cut down framework for text files but it would be better to have something that can cope with all sorts of files.