Me: I’m just interested in getting a local sandbox going on my dev box so I can build your component, that way I can scope out the level of effort needed to make our recommended changes.

Them: I don’t understand, you want to make changes to the dev build?

Me: I just want a local sandbox; I don’t want to check anything in. That way I can better understand the code.

Them: Uh, that’s not the way it works.

Me: Huh?

Them: When a developer wants to make a change to our component, they first check out the file, edit it, then check it back in. Then a nightly build recompiles the product and deploys it on a test harness where, after the nightly runs, the product is smoke tested to make sure there are no problems. Of course a developer can trigger the build process manually if they need to; this triggers the nightly to run early.

Me: You mean there is no local developer sandbox?

Them: No; that’s the way our development process works. You check in your changes and our test harness compiles and verifies the changes work.