Sablime® v5.2, Update 3

Working on C-Sab is new and exciting, but we realize that the existing Sablime® is not (yet) flawless.

Update 3 to Release 5.2 not only fixes some bugs, but adds more features.

Foreign Filesystem Getversion

Web Sablime® has always been able to run the getversion command, but only to add files onto a filesystem that was mounted on the Sablime® host.

With update 3, Web Sablime® will be able to extract files and populate a node that is resident on any Web Sablime® client machine.

Get and Put Improvements

In order to accomplish the getversion enhancement, Web Sablime® in Update 3 uses Java applets, which allow Sablime® to read and write files directly, without having to use the client's upload and download dialogues.

This technology also permits Web Sablime® to see and react to the file permissions on the client system, and overwrite files or change permissions in the same way that native Unix Sablime® does.

Thus, after an Edput, your local copy of the file will be set read-only. Also the "rm" option will now be meaningful in Web Sablime.

Bug Fixes and More

In addition to the features mentioned above, update 3 will contain a good number of bug fixes and interface tweaks of Web Sablime®, and some bug fixes on mainstream Sablime® as well.

Available in August

We expect the v5.2u3 release to be made available in August 2001.

  Concurrent Sablime

It's been requested in our surveys, and it was the clear favorite of the attendees at our recent Customer Conference, and now it is real.

Concurrent Sablime®, or C-Sab, is currently well into development, and scheduled for initial release late this year. C-Sab will be introduced in three layers, starting with basic "unreserved check-out" concurrency.

This allows the same file to be checked out at the same time by different users. When the users check in, they either get a normal check-in (if they were the first), or if there was another check-in since their check-out, the system launches a merge operation.

The merge looks at the new change, the other change and the common ancestor, and assists the user in resolving any conflicts prior to placing the merged result back onto the mr branch.

Users will be able to request "reserved" check-outs as well, meaning that they reserve the next delta for themselves. This doesn't stop other people from checking the file out, but does prevent other check-ins.

And, of course, the administrator can disable concurrency altogether if that suits their process. Even though we call it "C-Sab", the concurrency capability is being built in to the standard distribution of Sablime: this will not be an add-on or a separate product.

Subsequent releases of C-Sab will include the capability to have multiple deltas on branches other than the mr branch; to have multiple MRs on those branches; and then to have branches from branches.

To get a view of these planned features, you can look at our C-Sab Concept document on our Bell-Labs Public Sablime® web page.

When C-Sab is released, it will be as Sablime® v6.0.

C-Sab (Sablime® v6.0) Beta Testing

Since C-Sab will require a database conversion, and involves small but widespread changes in Sablime® command functionality, there needs to be a sizeable testing effort prior to General Availability.

In addition to our internal System and Regression testing, we are looking for customers who would be interested in installing v6.0 and using it with their real databases. Whether against a "live" database, or against a copy, there are things we learn when the product is used by real users with real data - things we just can't properly simulate with our test databases.

If you are interested in getting early usage of C-Sab, and possibly influencing its final form even more, please contact us at sablime@lucent.com

Earlier this year, we held two Sablime® Customer Conferences. These were half-day sessions at two different Lucent locations and by teleconference, where we discussed future development possibilities for Sablime.

These mainly focused on the possible features Concurrent Sablime® and Multi-Sab, and some variations of each.

It turned out that although the customers were positive about both the major feature opportunities, there was a clear preference for Concurrent Sablime. Those that wanted Concurrent Sablime® wanted fully featured concurrency. That is our goal with C-Sab.

One related issue is that we are hoping to expand these customer input conferences to include non-Lucent customers.

  Process Breakdown

One of the features on Sablime®'s Web Site is the customer MR entry form. Customers can go to the Bell-Labs Public customer feedback site to describe a specific problem with Sablime.

The submitted information gets emailed to the MR administrator, and we either create an MR against Sablime® development or otherwise handle the issue. In any case, we email the customer and tell them what the status is.

At least that's what is supposed to happen.

Earlier this year, we had some machine failures and upgrades, and somewhere in there the process that reads this queue got stopped and not restarted. So we went quite a while without reviewing these inputs.

It would have been nice to think that there were no customer problems during that time, but the plain truth is we just neglected to look for them or to notice that they weren't being automatically processed.

We apologize for that. Especially to those customers who had MRs in the queue. They've already received acknowledgement in email, but we'd like to do so publicly as well.

 Known Issues - Recent Sablime® problems with workarounds or solutions

Multiple emails being appended and mailed as one - Some of the Sablime-created email may not have a final carriage-return. Most systems handle this OK, but on HP Sablime® servers (10.20 and 11.x), the system interprets this as binary data and terminates it with a <null>. This, in turn, causes the messages to appear appended to each other.
We have compiled a replacement for the Sablime® "MailServer" executable that eliminates the problem. See the known issue page at the Bell-Labs Public Sablime® page.
This fix will be included in update 3.
Approve command fails with a call-sccs message: "bad p-file format (co17)" (Too many deltas) - If the number of deltas in one file being approved is very large (it varies, but is somewhere over 100), then the underlying SCCS system truncates the line in the p-file, resulting in an improperly formatted p-file.
To avoid this problem in the future, approve MRs more frequently and limit the amount of times one MR is used to update (edget/edput) a file.
This is an SCCS problem, out of our direct control. We will be looking for ways to build in a work-around, but in the meantime, you may want to consider the workarounds published on our known issues page on the Bell-Labs Public Sablime® web site.
Web Sablime® create/fcreate errors with Netscape 4.7x and Netscape 6.0 - On Web Sablime®, some web browsers have problems with the create/fcreate commands due to a JavaScript function which manipulates the "module" field.   The JavaScript function created to map Systems and Subsystems to the appropriate Module apparently causes problems for Netscape 4.7x and Netscape 6.0 web browsers because of its size.
Check out the known issues page for a workaround or a patch at the Bell-Labs Public Sablime® web site.

One of the intentions of this particular newsletter issue was to address customer's concerns about the long-term viability of Sablime. As you are likely aware, Lucent Technologies has gone through some serious downsizing this year, and is just now completing a Voluntary Retirement Incentive program.

This space in the newsletter was originally reserved for a message about the above from Ivan Strom, the Sablime® Product Manager. Ivan, however, is one of the individuals that has accepted the retirement offer. We'd all like to extend our thanks to Ivan for his efforts over the last year.

Sablime®, though, remains.

Sablime® continues to pursue very active development, incorporating improved support for such things as concurrent development and geographically distributed development, while maintaining strong focus on our large base of existing customers that use Sablime® in the traditional fashion.

Sablime® remains a critical component of many Lucent and non-Lucent software development teams, and we expect to continue in that role for years to come. So even as Lucent reworks itself, and even though Sablime® will, like everyone else, be affected by these corporate changes, you can be sure that Sablime® will continue to provide a simple yet powerful solution for your Software Configuration Management needs.

As always, thanks for your support,

The Sablime® Development, Test, and Support Team - Merryll Abrahams, Zhi Bin Cao, Harry Jiang, Doris Liu, Vikas Mehta, Paul Riffle, Jagruti Shah, Yanlin Shi, John Snively, Milton Soto, Kris Wempa, Guangrong Xing, Peng-Nien Yu

We are planning to discontinue support for the X Windows Sablime® command set in Sablime® v6.0 and beyond. As anyone who has looked in the xsab bin knows, these commands are huge.

Given the relatively small number of customers that use them, it is increasingly difficult to justify the development and distribution resources required to maintain them.

And, of course, Web Sablime® is designed to handle the Graphical Interface needs for Sablime.

As we shed the legacy interfaces of X Windows and MS Windows, we should be able to move more quickly to turn around improvements for Web and mainstream Sablime.

The customer conference and surveys confirm that most customers aren't using these interfaces, and many that are just haven't gotten around to switching to Web Sablime.

Of course, we are still open to feedback on this issue, so let us know at sablime@lucent.com.