Octopi is the command center for all of your SCM processes. Focusing on these key concepts: Planning, Coordination, Execution, and Monitoring, Octopi provides a place where you can manage SCM processes seamlessly. From managing server configurations, synchronizing database and source code deployment, mapping bugs to promotes, monitoring applications, to managing product versioning. More importantly, by using Octopi, you have a single place where all your SCM activities are regulated, recorded and monitored. Most big companies who can afford it, have a home-grown solution that is similar to Octopi, others simply live without it.
One of the unfortunate reality in IT industry is that typically, a software development projects/organizations do not realize how important it is to invest time and other resources to put in place a repeatable process to manage product deployment. On the other hand, the analysis, design, and construction part of the software lifecycle has been covered a lot. However, since product deployment is where "rubber meets the road", often time an excellent piece of software falls apart when it's time to be delivered to the target consumer.
One of Octopi's main intention is to provide a working SCM "backbone" to those who need it. Therefore, the less your project/organization have in terms of SCM processes, the more you will get out of Octopi. Usually, a software development project/organization falls into one of these categories (from worst to best):
Octopi provides higher-level functions than other tools because it also facilitate workflow-like collaboration among different teams within the organization which are involved in a process.
For example, within a typical application deployment to production, the development team is not the only one involved, the deployment also depends on the DBA team for making synchronized database changes, a QA team for testing the features that are being deployed, and a team of SME's who will certify the deployment from customer's perspective. These coordinations are often neglected or handled in an ad-hoc fashion, thus lacking any kind of traceability and repeatability.
Octopi is able to accomplish this by interacting with a careful selection of existing tools which has been used widely in the industry.
For instance, rather than providing a smogasboard of "compatibility" with a wide-range of Version Control systems, Octopi focuses on the most manageable of the bunch, in this case: Subversion. This way, we can provide a branching and tagging mechanism that allows for a flexible yet controlled development environments.
IMPORTANT NOTE: We intend to support other Version Control systems in the future, but we started with Subversion with the realization that most Software Development organizations out there does not have a working SCM process. Thus by coming up with a working versioning mechanism, Octopi can help said organizations to build up (or strenghten) their SCM department.
Features:
The official documentation for Octopi will be available online in the near future, for now, a development blog is setup here