In information technology and telecommunications, the term configuration management or configuration control has the following meanings:

#The management of security features and assurances through control of changes made to hardware, Software, firmware, document, 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 development project, sometimes referred 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. #After establishing a configuration, such as that of a telecommunications or computer system, the evaluating and approving change requests to the configuration and to the interrelationships among system components. #In distributed-queue dual-bus (DQDB) networks, the function that ensures the resources of all nodes of a DQDB network are configured into a correct dual-bus topology. The functions that are managed include the head of bus, external timing source, and default slot generator functions.

See also Information Technology Infrastructure Library#Configuration Management, Capability Maturity Model

=Products for software configuration management (SCM)=

For a more complete list see List of revision control software. *[http://www.accurev.com AccuRev], a commercial product designed to mirror your optimal development process with the leading stream-based architecture. Free software download and SCM white papers available. *Evolution, ([http://www.ionforge.com available here]), simply better SCM and digital asset management. Enterprise strength source control with excellent features for decentralized development, but affordable for small development teams. Free for single user use. 30-day full featured multi-user evaluation version available for free. *StarTeam, [http://www.borland.com/us/products/starteam/index.html Click here]Borland StarTeam 2005 is a comprehensive software change and configuration management solution that provides large, geographically distributed development teams with a robust platform for coordinating and managing the entire software delivery process *Razor, [http://www.razor.visible.com Click here] An easy to use version control system that adapts to your process (.scc compliant) *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 version control system for distributed development (can use e-mail for synchronization) (.scc compliant) *Concurrent Versions System, 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) *[http://www.perforce.com Perforce], a powerful and very fast proprietary version control system *Revision Control System, features separate backward deltas for faster access to the trunk tip compared to SCCS and an improved user interface; the former at the cost of slow branch tip access and missing support for included/excluded deltas (.scc compliant) *Visual SourceSafe (.scc compliant) *Subversion (software) the successor of CVS *SCCS the original UNIX .scc program, based on interleaved deltas (and, contrary to common misbelief, not separate forward deltas/Diffs); by included and excluded revisions, can construct versions as arbitrary sets of revisions (resp. the deltas associated with them) *AllChange flexible configuration management solution *BitKeeper, a proprietary configuration management solution. *Cfengine, administers and configures computers according to high-level language configuration files *LCFG, a large scale UNIX configuration system *[http://www.vestasys.org/ Vesta], an advanced configuration management system. Free software. Used at [http://www.intel.com/ Intel] for microprocessor design. *AllFusion Harvest Change Manager, commercial change and configuration management tool from Computer Associates *[http://bazaar-ng.org/ Bazaar-NG], is an open source distributed version control system still in the early stages of development *[http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/cogito/ Cogito/git] is used to manage the source tree for the Linux kernel. *[http://www.selenic.com/mercurial Mercurial] is a fast, free, distributed SCM system. *KONFIG CM, [http://www.auto-trol.com]the total configuration management solution for software, hardware, data and all physical items.

=Sites for configuration management=

*[http://www.cmcrossroads.com/ CM Crossroads], an online community for Configuration Management *[http://www.snuffybear.com/ucmcentral.htm 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.phpid=12] *An article on Open source configuration management tools, including references to many of them, see [http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm.html Comments on OSS/FS Software Configuration Management (SCM) Systems] *[http://www.cmmagazin.de/ CM Magazin], a german-language online magazine for Configuration Management

=See also=

*Revision control *Change management *Change detection *Dependency management *Software configuration management *Programming tool *Software engineering *List of software engineering topics

=External links=

*[http://cfengine.org Cfengine.org] *[http://cfwiki.org cfwiki.org] *[http://www.software-pointers.com/en-configuration-tools.html Software-Pointers - List of Configuration Management Tools] *Article [http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.phpid=3 Software Configuration Management for the Web] from [http://www.methodsandtools.com/ Methods & Tools]