Getting started with Jazz source control

You can use Jazz™ source control to manage source code, documents, and other artifacts that you want to place under version control and share with a team.
Jazz source control is closely integrated with the other application development lifecycle tools included in Rational® Team Concert.
  • The Jazz Build Engine and Build System Toolkit have built-in support for loading files from Jazz source control, capturing snapshots of build input so that a build can be reproduced exactly, and direct access to a rich set of tools that you can use to view the component versions that are present in a specific build and compare them with versions in other builds, streams, and workspaces. For more information, see Building with Jazz.
  • Change sets can be linked to work items, enabling traceability of individual changes and insight into the reasons why they were made. For more information, see Tracking work items with Jazz.
  • Process pre-conditions can be used to control the flow of change sets. For example, you can configure a process so that a change set must be reviewed and approved before it can be delivered to an integration stream. For more information, see Working with projects, teams, and process.

Workspaces, change sets, and change flow

Jazz source control stores artifacts such as files and folders in the Jazz repository. You create a repository workspace to hold your private copies of the files and folders that you want to work with, and then load the contents of your repository workspace into a local workspace (a directory in your computer's file system) so that the files and folders are accessible to tools like editors, compilers, and integrated development environments. As you make changes to the contents of your local workspace, you periodically check them in, which copies them to the repository workspace so that the two workspaces contain the same versions of the files. In the repository workspace, related changes are collected as change sets, which enable changes in multiple files and folders to be committed in a single operation.

Figure 1 illustrates a simple configuration of a repository workspace a single component. Check-in copies changes from the local workspace to the repository workspace. Load loads the local workspace with the contents of the repository workspace.
Figure 1. Check-in copies work from your local workspace to your repository workspace
When you work as part of a team, your workspace and the workspaces of other team members are configured to deliver their changes to a shared repository object such as a stream. Figure 2 shows how change sets created in a local workspace and then checked in to a repository workspace can be shared by delivering them to a stream that all team members use. Because the stream is a flow target of all team members' repository workspaces, the change sets it contains are accessible to all team members.
Figure 2. Change sets checked in to a repository workspace can be delivered to a stream to make them available to other team members

First steps with Jazz source control

You can take your first steps with Jazz source control on your own, or as part of a team.
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