These Perl scripts were originally developed by Joe Ayers, and then modified by Continuus Professional Services consultants including myself. I adapted them to use the new command line syntax for the revamp of Task Based CM moving from CM Synergy 4.x to 5.x. I also was the first consultant to get the scripts running on Windows desktops.

The standard process for creating baselines shown in the documentation and taught by the training staff is cumbersome in RAD development environments. It can be put up with if you release on the order of every three to six months, but it can be a real burden if your cycle is weekly or even daily. The rebaseline scripts provide an automated procedure to snapshot your build and point the developers at the newly created baseline. Once you are happy with a build, you can start the script and walk away to do other work. The development staff doesn't need to track which release is current since they are always developing to something like "next big thing (nbt)", "hotfix", or "patch". Their work areas are switched automatically so that you as the release manager don't need to track this down and beat up on them.

Needless to say, when Continuus was selling into the dot-com rage in 2000, these scripts were de-rigeur. Irvine was still keeping to the party line, but I think some in development quietly began to use them internally.