Working with releases

You can use a release to mark projects, tasks, and folders for particular releases. A release also helps you to track which object versions were developed for each release.
Note: Set the release value for all projects and tasks in Rational® Synergy.

Rational Synergy stores releases for your software application. Only build managers can create or modify releases. Each database has its own set of releases, although you can transfer releases between databases by using Rational Synergy Distributed (DCM).

Releases contain settings that affect the process for a team, for example:

For example, a typical release can be any of the examples shown in the table. This example shows the release, which is created by the build manager. It is made up of the component name and the component release. The release is what the users see.

Table 1. Release example
Release Component name Component release
1.0   1.0
2.0   2.0
2.0_patch   2.0_patch
Synergy/7.0 Synergy 7.0
editor/2.0 editor 2.0
editor/2.1 editor 2.1

A release consists of an optional component name and release delimiter (slash, by default), and a component release. The component name might represent the name of an application or component, such as Synergy or editor. The component release identifies the specific release of that application or component.

The component name is not a mandatory part of the release. In the first row in the table above, the 1.0 component name does not have a component, and Rational Synergy leaves it blank

When you create a release, you can create it based on an existing release, and the new release inherits properties of that release automatically.

During a release, a team reaches different milestones that it might want to reproduce. The build manager can create a baseline for each milestone. The build manager typically creates many baselines during a release. For example, a baseline is typically created for each nightly integration build that passes testing. A baseline is used for reproducibility, such as when a team must roll back to a previous good build or when a team releases a Beta version of a product and wants to reproduce that feature set to assist Beta customers. Although baselines complement releases, baselines are named differently, usually by date although sometimes including a milestone in the name, such as Beta or General Release. For more information about baselines, see Baselining projects.

The release can be any text string up to 97 characters long. (The component name can contain a maximum of 64 characters. The component release can contain a maximum of 32 characters. The release delimiter contains 1 character.) For example, a possible release is Integrations/telecom_patch

Component names and component releases must not start with the following characters:

/ \ ' " : * ? [ ] @ % - + ~ space, tab

Second and subsequent characters cannot include:

/ \ ' " : * ? [ ] @ %

The component name and component release can contain the version delimiter character (by default -) if it is not one of the restricted characters.

Whenever an object is checked out, Rational Synergy automatically copies the release from the current task to the new object.


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