FixPack Publishing Tool Enhancements
When a software company releases a product, the "original" release is often not the "final" release. Later companies provide upgrades to fix bugs, add functionality, etc. At IBM, these updates come in the form of FixPacks.
FixPacks are collections of updates for multiple products and platforms. As a result, these updates tend to be very large in size, typically multiple gigabytes per update.
Before a customer can retrieve an update, IBM must publish the fixes to a centralized repository so they will be available to their customers. Users of this tool typically publish between 30 to 50 FixPacks in a single session and, due to the size of the FixPacks, this can be time consuming.
The FixPack Publishing Tool aims to semi-automate this process by allowing IBM employees to publish fixes in bulk, as well as to reduce the amount of work required to publish a Fix. This tool does this by allowing employees to choose multiple FixPacks, modify any data associated with them, and publish them in bulk as opposed to individually. Another way in which this tool reduces the amount of work required to publish fixes is by eliminating the need for users to repeatedly re-enter information that, for the most part, is reusable.
The FixPack Publishing Tool will be integrated into Eclipse, a programming environment developed by IBM, and will run on both Microsoft Windows and Linux. IBM users familiar with Eclipse will find this plug-in easy to use as either a stand-alone tool, or along with other Eclipse plug-ins.
Michael Haine, Tom Castellani, Richard Schultz, Andrew Daniels
