Creating a baseline to save a milestone

Teams usually create a baseline to freeze a configuration at a milestone, for example, a weekly build, a beta release, a hardware integration milestone, or a release to manufacturing. They also create a baseline before they branch a configuration to create a variant.

Before you begin

You must have the Baseline Maker or Configuration Lead role to create baselines.

About this task

Recall that a stream is modifiable while a baseline is frozen.

In some systems, multiple configuration leads might create baselines. In a large system, where teams are responsible for portions of the system, multiple configuration leads that support each team must communicate and coordinate with each other. The following scenarios show the different settings that multiple configuration leads might use.
  • Several teams are working to fix problems on independent schedules. Each team resolves their problems at different times, and then creates baselines.
  • Several teams are working to fix problems on a synchronized schedule. Each team resolves their problems at the same time, and then creates baselines.
  • A team that completed a patch is ready to baseline the global configuration for the patch and then merge the changes into the main stream.
When you create a baseline of a global configuration, baselines of streams that are contributed by other IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management applications are created automatically if you have permission to create baselines in that application. This automation removes the need to replace streams with baselines manually. If baselines cannot be created automatically in any of the Engineering Lifecycle Management applications, a baseline staging stream is created with the baselines that were created. See Creating a baseline staging stream from a stream hierarchy.
Tip: In a global configuration tree view, you can create baselines of local streams without selecting a global stream. Select the local streams, right-click one, and select Create Baseline. For more information, see Creating baselines of streams contributed by other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications.

Procedure

  1. Select a stream in the tree view to create a baseline. Then, right-click and select Create Baseline, or click Create Baseline from the menu bar.
    This action creates a baseline hierarchy by copying the selected stream hierarchy.

    To create a baseline of a local stream only, see Creating baselines of streams contributed by other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications.

  2. Enter a name suffix that describes the milestone you are capturing. The name suffix is appended to all stream names in the hierarchy, which become the baseline names after you create the baseline hierarchy.
    A preview of the baseline names is shown under Baselines to be created section.
  3. Update tags, if necessary.

    For more information, see Tags, attribute values, and links.

  4. Optional: Enter a description to help you identify the baselines in a list, such as in configuration editors.
  5. Click OK.

What to do next

If you created the baseline successfully, your work is done for this task. If you cannot create a baseline because one or more streams in the hierarchy cannot be committed, see Creating a baseline staging stream from a stream hierarchy.