More SCM Books in 2006

Some more SCM books have come on the market in the past 6 months or so. Several of them are worth a look:

• Practical Perforce, by Laura Wingerd
• 2nd edition of Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion, by Mike Mason
• Global Outsourcing with MS Visual Studio 2005 Team System
• IBM Rational Clearcase, Ant, and Cruise Control, by Kevin Lee
• Implementing IBM Rational ClearQuest, hot off the presses by Christian Buckley and Darren Pulsipher

I realize Practical Perforce isn't new - I just can't stop gushing about how great it is! Laura Wingerd really has a gift for elegantly and simply stating important (and sometimes profound) insights about SCM, particularly when it comes to component/container-based SCM and codeline branching and management.

Global Outsourcing with VSTS looks interesting - not really sure if I like it enough to recommend it just yet. It certainly has an attention grabbing title.

The 2nd edition of Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion is just as outstanding as the first edition. It is my first choice for an introducitory book on Subversion and Version Control.

Kevin Lee's book on using ClearCase, ANT and CruiseControl is nothing short of outstanding. If you're a Java-shop using ClearCase and want lots of practical tips and tactics for doing automated builds and accelerating the build process, this book is a MUST HAVE! Kevin's website is also a great resource. Now that IBM/Rational has acquired BuildForge I imagine their will be updates at his website (and eventually a 2nd ed?) about using Clearcase with BuildForge (and maybe some stuff regarding Maven2?). He apparently has some new (online PDF-only) book out called The BuildMeister's Guide from a new series/publisher called Buildmeister books.

Pulsipher and Buckley did a great job in their earlier book The Art of ClearCase Deployment. Now they have a similar book about ClearQuest entititled Implementing IBM Rational ClearQuest: An End-to-End Deployment Guide. So far it looks very good. It's also the only ClearQuest book I know of - so If youre using ClearQuest for anything but a small or informal project you probably should get your hands on this book in a hurry!