How to take baseline?

[Özge Köktürk]

Hello, 

For a long time I'm trying to switch between IBM Rational ClearCase - ClearQuest and Jira, Bitbucket, Git for my company's processes. In IBM Rational CC, we could take baselines for configuration items by deciding on which CIs will be included to the baseline with which revision info and so on. However, I cannot perform these baseline functions on Jira or Bitbucket. I've been searching how to deal with this but cannot find any proper way to do it.

Is there any way to perform baseline activities(not the project baselines) on Jira or Bitbucket? I'd be so pleasant if you could help me.

Thank you!

[Emre Toptancı [OBSS] · Accepted solution]

For Bitbucket I can recommend two options:

1. Use tags. Just tag the latest commit on your branch with something like 'baseline-xxyyzz'. This way you can easily reach that state of the code later and even compare it with other branches. If you can embed this tagging action to your CI/CD pipeline, even better.
2. Create a branch named "baseline/xxyyzz". You can even set the permissions to prevent people from deleting baseline branches.

I suggest using the first one as it causes less branch littering over time.

For Jira, it is not that easy.

1. The free and obvious way to do this would be to export your Jira issues to a file. Not very practical but a solution still.
2. If you are willing to pay some for a marketplace app, you can have a look at R4J, which is basically a requirements management app but gives you the ability to create baselines. The app Xporter takes the export option a little further and allows you to define file format templates. There might be others in the marketplace (I am not related to either of those apps).

Hope this helps.

[Özge Köktürk]

Hello,

I'd like to thank you for your detailed explanation. I've tried 1st option and it worked so well. We can keep tracking baseline structure with tagging mechanism. Also, I've separated the baseline branch as you said to keep the changes apart from other branches. Hence, the Configuration Manager can lead that branch easily.

Thank you!