Sandbox (software development)

Article summary

A sandbox is a testing environment that isolates untested code changes and outright experimentation from the production environment or repository in the context of software development, including web development, automation, revision control, configuration management (see also change management), and patch management. Sandboxing protects "live" servers and their data, vetted source code distributions, and other collections of code, data and/or content, proprietary or public, from changes that could be damaging to a mission-critical system or which could simply be difficult to revert, regardless of the intent of the author of those changes. Sandboxes replicate at least the minimal functionality needed to accurately test the programs or other code under development (e.g. usage of the same environment variables as, or access to an identical database to that used by, the stable prior implementation intended to be modified; there are many other possibilities, as the specific functionality needs vary widely with the nature of the code and the application[s] for which it is intended). The concept of sandboxing is built into revision control software such as Git, CVS and Subversion (SVN), in which developers "check out" a copy of the source code tree, or a branch thereof, to examine and work on.…

Key claims

No claims recorded.

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

No sources recorded.