Starting from a baseline

After you create project components or select existing components, you must identify and recommend the baseline or baselines that serve as the starting point for the team of developers. Just as a component represents a collection of elements, a baseline represents a collection of versions within a component. An ordinary baseline identifies one version of every element visible in a single component (see the following figure).
Figure 1. Baselines of two components

A parallelogram that represents an integration stream contains two cubes for components A and B.

Baselines named BL1 and BL2 in the integration stream identify the versions in component A and component B, respectively.

When developers join the project, they populate their work areas with the versions of directory and file elements represented by the recommended baselines of the project. Alternatively, developers can join the project at a feature-specific development stream level, in which case they populate their work areas with the development stream’s recommended baselines. This practice ensures that all members of the project team start with the same set of files.