configuration management

In Information Technology and telecommunication, the term configuration management has the following meanings:

The management of security features and assurances through control of changes made to hardware, software, firmware, documentation, test, test fixtures and test documentation of an automated information system, throughout the development and operational life of a system. Source Code Management or revision control is part of this.
The control of changes--including the recording thereof--that are made to the hardware, software, firmware, and documentation throughout the system lifecycle.
The control and adaption of the evolution of complex systems. It is the discipline of keeping evolving software products under control, and thus contributes to satisfying quality and delay constraints. Software configuration management (or SCM) can be divided into two areas. The first (and older) area of SCM concerns the storage of the entities produced during the software project, sometimes refered to as component repository management. The second area concerns the activities performed for the production and/or change of these entities; the term engineering support is often used to refer this second area.

Products for software configuration management (SCM)

TRUEchange, www.mccabe.com/true.htm
Aldon LM, complete configuration management solution for multiple-platforms (.scc compliant, eclipse compliant).
GNU Arch, a distributed revision control system
Code Co-op, affordable Peer-to-peer VCS for distributed development (.scc compliant)
CVS, a descendant of RCS (.scc compliant?)
Telelogic SYNERGY, a Task-Based CM system (.scc compliant)
PVCS, a competitor of SCCS (.scc compliant)
Rational ClearCase, a proprietary program (.scc compliant)
RCS, a descendant of SCCS, diffs based on most recent version (.scc compliant)
Visual SourceSafe (.scc compliant)
Subversion the successor of CVS
SCCS the original UNIX .scc program, based on diffs
AllChange flexible configuration management solution
Bitkeeper, a proprietary configuration management solution, the choice of the Linux Kernel developers
AccuRev, a relatively new proprietary product
Cfengine, administers and configures computers according to high-level language configuration files
LCFG, a large scale UNIX configuration system
Vesta, an advanced configuration management system. Free software. Used at Intel for microprocessor design.
AllFusion Harvest Change Manager, commercial change and configuration management tool from Computer Associates
Bazaar-NG, is an open source distributed version control system still in the early stages of development.

CM Crossroads, an online community for Configuration Management
UCMcentral, Configuration Management Coffee Break Site
Steve Easterbrook's CM Resource Guide http://www.cmiiug.com/
Parallel Development Strategies for Software Configuration Management http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=12
An article on Open source configuration management tools, including references to many of them, see Comments on OSS/FS Software Configuration Management (SCM) Systems
The subversion home page. The goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community.