It is a way to take inventory of many cgi scripts and web applications in a Software Service environment. It will be a way of creating changelogs and to keep track of which customers have which programs and will use diff and cksum to notice, compare and identify versions.It takes inventory, but we actually have inventory systems for non software companies (distributors, etc). So I would prefer not to have confusing names.Edit: We do not use a code repository. So this is not as much for compromised file checking (although it is pretty cool that will be covered), but it is really more as a replacement for a repository and as a way to keep track of which customers have what products to make sure we don't get out of sync with billing. We actually make most of our modifications live. Since these are not public systems, it does not matter that much. If it is public, we either create copies of the program or we run the program on a PC and then test it and then upload it to be live.
What do you call a cron that cksums all your files and writes them to a database?
naming;changes
Generally these things are referred to as file integrity scanners (You'll also see file integrity checker but that doesn't sound as cool.)They're most commonly used in systems administration, because they make it extremely easy to track changes in servers that have been compromised by viruses or crackers. Obviously, over here in programmer land, you can just do a diff on the current version of your code in a repo, so that's not as big a concern for us.