A unified version model for configuration management

A Zeller - Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on …, 1995 - dl.acm.org
Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Foundations of Software …, 1995dl.acm.org
Integration of configuration management (CM) tools into software development
environments raises the need for CM models to interoperate through a unified CM model. A
possible foundation is the version set model, a unified model for specifying versions and
version operations, where versions, components, and aggregates are grouped into
setsaccording to their features, using $ eature logic asa formal base to denote sets and
operations and deduce consistency. Version setsgeneralize well-known CM concepts such …
Integration of configuration management (CM) tools into software development environments raises the need for CM models to interoperate through a unified CM model. A possible foundation is the version set model, a unified model for specifying versions and version operations, where versions, components, and aggregates are grouped into setsaccording to their features, using $ eature logic asa formal base to denote sets and operations and deduce consistency. Version setsgeneralize well-known CM concepts such as components, repositories, workspaces, aggregates, or configurations and allow for unprecedented flexibility in combining these concepts, Arbitrary revisionhwiant combinations of components and aggregates are modeled in a uniform and orthogonal way. We show how the concepts of four central configuration management models—the checlchdcheckout model, the change set model, the composition model, and the long transaction model—are encompassed and combined by the version setmodel, making it aunified basis for modeling, realizing and integrating configuration management tasks. Finally, some conditions for efficient realization are identified, based on our practical experience with the configuration management tool ICE. Although the described operations generally result in exponential time complexity, it turns out that the discussed CM concepts can be realized and combined without loss of efficiency.
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