source: CMT/v1r12p20020606/doc/intro.html @ 1

<center><h1><b>Introduction</b></h1></center>

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CMT is a <i>configuration management</i> environment, based on some
management conventions and comprises several shell-based utilities. It
is an attempt to formalize software production and especially
configuration management around a <i>package</i>-oriented principle.

<p>The notion of <i>packages</i> represents hereafter a set of
software components (that may be applications, libraries, tools
etc...) that are to be used for producing a <i>system</i> or a
<i>framework</i>. In such an environment, several persons are assumed
to participate in the development and the components themselves are
either independent or related to each other.

<p>The environment provides conventions (for <i>naming</i> packages,
files, directories and for <i>addressing</i> them) and
tools for <i>automating</i> as much as possible the
implementation of these conventions. It permits to
<i>describe</i> the configuration requirements and automatically
deduce from the description the effective set of configuration
parameters needed to operate the packages (typically for
<i>building</i> them or <i>using</i> them).
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