A release in Serena® Dimensions® CM is a snapshot of the design structure or a baseline that you can use, for example, to package and ship to a customer, or use in integration testing.
A customer is the recipient of one or more releases. You show this in Dimensions by relating a release to a customer or a customer to a release. Relating customers to releases is usually called forwarding, and unrelating them is called withdrawing.
When you create a release, Dimensions creates a directory external to the Dimensions database that includes copies of all the files from a product configuration, or those files that satisfy the criteria in the release template. To ensure that items within a release are compatible, they must first be included in a release baseline.
There are two types of releases:
Release: a complete copy of a baseline. Dimensions copies all of the items in the baseline to the release directory, creating relative directories as necessary.
Delta: includes only the items that have changed since you created a previous release. Dimensions checks each item specification against the contents of the previous release. If there is an exact match, including the revision number, Dimensions skips the item.
Dimensions maintains a history of the items included in a release. It does not record the location of the release directory. Once Dimensions creates the copy of the configuration, it exercises no further control over the release directory or its contents.
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