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Revision classes for explicit versioning

Authors:

Susanne Cech Previtali,

Michele Schäuble,

Thomas R. GrossAuthors Info & Claims

RAM-SE '09: Proceedings of the Workshop on AOP and Meta-Data for Software Evolution

Article No.: 1, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/1562860.1562861

Published: 07 July 2009 Publication History

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Abstract

The source code of software is typically managed by version control systems that keep track of the different versions of files over time. As versioning is associated with a file and not a class, the versioning mechanism is semantically detached from the actual source code. This paper introduces the concept of revision classes. Revision classes provide an explicit versioning mechanism for classes that, similar to inheritance, allows the developer to redefine existing class members and add new class members in a new version. This explicit versioning mechanism allows the developer to explicitly declare the deltas to a previous version. The developer may reflect on the necessity of updates and thus errors can be avoided that sneak into the source code by inconsiderate changes.

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Gregersen AJørgensen BCleve ARobbes R(2011)Run-time phenomena in dynamic software updatingProceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution and the 7th annual ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution10.1145/2024445.2024448(6-15)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2024445.2024448
Cech Previtali SGross TBorba PChiba S(2011)Aspect-based dynamic software updatingProceedings of the tenth international conference on Aspect-oriented software development10.1145/1960275.1960289(105-116)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1960275.1960289

Index Terms

Revision classes for explicit versioning
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management
        Software maintenance
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software post-development issues
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
      2. Language types

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Reviews

Reviewer: Tansel Ersavas

A powerful approach to version control is finally reaching mainstream languages. Previtali, Sch?uble, and Gross propose an explicit versioning mechanism based on class versioning. Then, they describe a language extension for Java and validate the approach with a small case study. Their approach is sound, the presentation is very nice, and the case for introducing revision classes in Java convincingly demonstrates the advantages of versioning based on revision classes. Version control systems have been around for a long time. The authors claim that the bulk of these systems are based on source text, which is largely correct. However, some late binding languages with powerful metalanguage abilities, such as Smalltalk, and object database systems, such as GemStone, have included such versioning mechanisms for decades. The GemStone persistent object system has been around since 1987, and has had versioning through class history objects since very early implementations. Both the ENVY/Smalltalk versioning system [1]-regarded as a benchmark for versioning systems for Smalltalk-and Cincom's Store use the concept of class extensions for modifications. It is also important to note parallel research done for software diagrams using metadata-some computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools and academic researchers investigate metadata-based versioning for software diagrams [2]. The authors describe a method of improving a system using its own meta-abilities. There have been many advancements in this field over the last 30 years, but the achievements of the pioneer dynamic object-oriented languages went largely unpublished. More research is warranted into these achievements, in order to avoid reinventing them. Only when we understand these techniques can we find truly novel uses, both in version control and other similarly difficult fields. Nevertheless, the authors' approach is novel in its domain, and they deserve praise for finally bringing these techniques to mainstream programming. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Published In

RAM-SE '09: Proceedings of the Workshop on AOP and Meta-Data for Software Evolution

July 2009

39 pages

ISBN:9781605585482

DOI:10.1145/1562860

Editors:
Manuel Oriol
University of York, United Kingdom
,
Walter Cazzola
DICo Universita di Milano, Italy
,
Shigeru Chiba
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
,
Gunter Saake
Otto-von-Guericke-Universitat Magdeburg

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 07 July 2009

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ECOOP '09

ECOOP '09: European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming

July 7, 2009

Genova, Italy

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Gregersen AJørgensen BCleve ARobbes R(2011)Run-time phenomena in dynamic software updatingProceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution and the 7th annual ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution10.1145/2024445.2024448(6-15)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2024445.2024448
Cech Previtali SGross TBorba PChiba S(2011)Aspect-based dynamic software updatingProceedings of the tenth international conference on Aspect-oriented software development10.1145/1960275.1960289(105-116)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1960275.1960289

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Metadata efficiency in versioning file systems

Metadata Efficiency in Versioning File Systems

Versioning Version Trees: The Provenance of Actions that Affect Multiple Versions

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