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Are there any open source release management applications? I am not looking for version control. When a project is ready to be deployed to production as of now we are following a manual method like getting sign-off on paper.

Can any one suggest something?

CharlesB
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CoolArchTek
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    what exact functionality do you require or do you want something that can be customised. – krystan honour Mar 20 '12 at 15:39
  • In my last company we used IBM Change management software. I found that tool very useful whenever there a project or a simple task which is ready for production we just enter/create that item in the tool and specify who the business manager is, who the business tester is, who the tech manager is and finally who actually developed that... Every one can announce their approvals on the software it self so that I don't have to print papers or send emails etc. Hope I explained it better now.. :) – CoolArchTek Mar 22 '12 at 02:03
  • That's it? No other suggestions? – CoolArchTek Apr 14 '12 at 19:45
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    the problem is a lot of the products I have experience with are more than just release management, they tend to be tied into issue management (jira for example), I have no experience of software that solely deals with this one part of the process, probably because everyone tends to want an all encompassing piece of software, Redmine as mentioned below is an excellent project management peace of software and jira does issue management and release management, I'd reccommend jira but large portions of it are going to be a bit useless to you – krystan honour Apr 15 '12 at 00:10

7 Answers7

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This question is rather old, but you could try Rundeck, which provides the kind of functionality you're after (with auditing, permissions, etc.).

Alastair Maw
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Let me try to rephrase your question to test that I have understood: you want software support for the the 'release' business process (an example is engineers getting a set of sign-offs for changing a part. If a sign-off is refused, then the process is 'frozen' until re-work is completed, and the owner re-applies for release etc.).

While it is a 'sledge-hammer' approach, you might look at any of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. ERP systems that actually manage production processes will have a sign-off mechanism. A web search of "Open Source ERP" will turn up lots of them.

Here is wikipedias list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ERP_software_packages

Try to write down the process you'd like, as clearly as you can, in a few Use Cases. Find out the ERP systems with a local support mechanism, and email your Use cases to see if anyone has a good fit 'out of the box'

Note: In this scenario, the software product is just a 'part'

You might be fortunate, and find a system where release is a relatively small independant system which can be used stand-alone.

gbulmer
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I wonder if you are looking for open-source tools because you dont want to pay much or concerned with costs.

If that's the case, you might be interested in our complete release management & deployment tool called SyncRelease. It only costs $50 for perpetual license for a single user.

Some of the cool features includes:

  • Easy single-click deployment to multiple environments such as TEST, PRODUCTION
  • Deploy through FTP or over SSH rsync for faster upload to remote server
  • Easily rollback to any point in release history
  • Pre/Post deployment hooks to do any custom tasks such as running unit test or minify javascripts and CSS

  • Cherry-pick changes with automatic dependency checks

    Checkout the project site : http://syncrelease.com/tour

kthant
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Trac is a project management system, this could be what you are after.

Jenkin is a continuous integration system that could be used to do what you are talking about.

Neither of these system provide source control, but they do tie in with what ever source control you are already using, and if you are not using source control then that is your biggest concern right now

thecoshman
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I am assuming it is a web application. The defacto release management application is Apache Ant for Web and otherwise (users of make may have to agree incase of Web Apps). With Ant you can automate all your build tasks including:

  1. Concatenating files in an order.
  2. Running any command line / Shell program including startup arguments / options. The earlier point is used in web apps to automatically compress js/css using YUI compressor jar or Google Closure Jar.
  3. Do auto text processing into source code. Eg. using a regular expression you can remove all instance of console.logs from the final production code. All automatically.
  4. Use custom build names to release build with different configurations (different features loaded).
  5. Complete Integration into bug tracking and Version Control.

Apache Ant is made in java but all settings are written using a simple syntaxed XML file called build.xml. You can also explore make, rake and jake.

The best build software really depends on what you're building and your comfort level.

Gaurav Ramanan
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In my company we use Redmine. It's required server with Ruby.

Rafał Wójcik
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At my work, we use TeamForge for tracking bugs, managing feature requests and versioning project documents (e.g., requirements, designs, etc.). SCM commits can be linked to TeamForge artifacts, which relates our builds to bug fixes and new features. TeamForge can also give a project administrator the ability to approve or reject changes (which sounds like a key feature you may be looking for). We also use jenkins for continuous integration. So, TeamForge, your SCM of choice, and Jenkins would provide a pretty good system for managing releases.

aliasmrchips
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