NuGet is a package manager for developers that puts the best .NET libraries just a click away. It provides acess to free developer libraries and supports a model where companies can set up a private “app store” to manage libraries in their company. Learn how to work with NuGet to streamline your projects.

Customizing or extending third party "vendor" source code is becoming increasingly common especially with the availability of open-source software. Building upon existing code increases your time to market and lets a group of experts elsewhere develop the foundation. Vendors typically provide frequent patches and new features in the form of vendor releases. Managing the incorporation of vendor releases alongside customizations requires an additional layer of configuration management. raditional branch-based software configuration management (SCM) tools require an unnecessarily complex branch and merge process. This article describes how stream-based SCM provides a more intuitive and efficient parallel development model for managing customizations to vendor code.

This article presents the different approaches to develop concurrently many versions of the same software.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to implementing Continuous Delivery. This article reflects on some of the patterns he has observed over the last 15 years.

A brute force attack, also known as a dictionary attack, is one of the more uncomplicated attacks available to a hacker. However, the odds of this type of attack succeeding can be very high if a site is not configured properly. Learn more about what can be done to defend a site against a brute force attack - including implementing incremental delays and carefully wording error messages - and which defensive strategies don't work.

When using a Continuous Integration (CI) system, team members integrate application components early and often, up to several integrations a day per developer. Lest that idea set your teeth on edge, note that each integration is immediately checked and verified by an automated build to find any errors instantly. While the concept of CI might take some getting used to, it can be a valuable system.
A basic principle of a CI system is that the word build needs to be redefined. Formerly, you might have thought of a build as simply a compilation. When it comes to CI, you must understand that the definition of build now includes the all-important steps of verification and testing. CI depends on the presence of tests. Without tests, all you have is continuous compilation.
Since developers are the main users of a CI system, they will determine whether the system is a success or a failure. Developers really only want two things: a build that takes less than five minutes and an easy way to find the cause of a build failure. Success will also depend on your team's build etiquette. I recommend these simple guidelines:
* Never leave the building if you have broken the build.
* Don't submit to a broken build.
* Be nice. When you see that the build is broken, look at the build report. If you know how to fix the issue, contact the developer that broke the build and offer to help.

Maven is a popular build tool available for java developers. One of the benefits of maven is that helps to reduce the duplication of dependent software libraries (jars) required to build an application. The maven suggested approach is to store all the software libraries in a remote store called a repository. Maven synchronizes with the public repository at ibiblio.org This repository is slow, unreliable and does not have the latest versions of some libraries(jars) available elsewhere. Libraries private to the organization cannot be uploaded there either. By setting up an internal maven repository, an organization can avail of the benefits of a maven repository and bypass some of the shortcomings of the repository at ibiblio. This article looks at some of the functionality that a maven repository should provide. Criteria for choosing a maven repository are listed. Steps involved in setting up a maven repository using Artifactory are explained. The process of setting up the repository is same for both Linux and Windows and the minor differences are highlighted in the article. Examples of maven ‘pom’ files which use this repository are shown. The article is illustrated with screenshots to guide the user in setting up a repository. Sample maven and artifactory configuration is shown.

The revolutionary effects of social networks have not missed the world of software development. Many services emerged to support collaboration on projects over the Internet, especially in the world of open-source software. Concepts such as distributed version control, routine forking, and pull requests are in some ways changing the basic process of group development. One of the most popular social networks for software collaboration is GitHub, whose motto is "Social Coding." Learn about development social networks in the context of GitHub, but with principles applicable to other sites such as BitBucket, and even to your organization's internal systems.

This article describes the adaptation of the classic software configuration model for Web-based applications.

With software applications becoming increasingly complex and the demand for rapid deployment (including rapid prototyping) of software applications increasing, automated tools and updated methods for software development have become necessary. It follows that these new software development processes require new approaches for software safety. One company’s 15-element Software Safety Process has now been adapted to a model-driven, spiral software development effort. This process provides an open working relationship to incrementally identify the causes of hazards at different levels.