5 REQ lifecycle

lifecycle: Handling the lifecycle of collected data

Requirements traceability is done during the whole lifecycle of a project. Therefore, mantra must be able to handle continuous changes to collected data, while ensuring that the data used to generate traceability reports remains consistent throughout the project's lifecycle.

lifecycle.vcs: Integration with Version Control Systems

Most projects use version control systems (VCS) to manage their source code. mantra must be integratable in those VCS without hindering existing development workflows.

Furthermore, mantra should not require to store binary files in the VCS to handle change detection, because binary files are impossible to humanly review in common VCS like git.

Implementation Details:

All collected data must be stored as JSON files in a sub-folder in the .mantra folder. These files serve as caches that will be imported into the SQL database before collecting new data.

lifecycle.versioning: Versioning of collected data

Collected data must be versioned in a way that integrates with existing development workflows, because mantra must only consider data for the generation of traceability reports that is related to the current version of the project.

lifecycle.versioning.id: Identification of a project version

A project must be uniquely identified by a name and version number. No semantic versioning can be assumed, because mantra must also be usable for projects that do not follow semantic versioning.

Implementation Details:

Each execution of mantra collect adds a new entry in the database to which all collected data of this execution is linked to. This entry is identified by a UTC timestamp, a hash over all collected data, and the project name and version. When generating traceability reports, mantra by default only considers data that is linked to the project name and version that was last added to the database.