Question

What are baselines with respect to software configuration management?

Answer 1

Simply put, for software development, a baseline is a static (i.e. unchanging) snapshot of your source code tree at any point in time. The purpose of the baseline is to have a static reference point for changes that occur once the baseline is created. In software development, baselines are created at various planned points in the software development process. A baseline is also useful when you need to create a “branch” to provide an emergency fix based off of some baseline of code that was delivered to a customer. The emergency fix is safely developed in a separate branch away from the “main” development. Regardless of what I do in the branch, the baseline will never be destroyed (i.e. you can always return to a known starting point).