Version Models for Software Configuration Management

Reidar Conradi, Bernhard Westfechtel

           After more than 20 years of research and practice in software
           configuration management (SCM), constructing consistent
           configurations of versioned software products still remains a
           challenge. This paper focuses on the version models underlying
           both commercial systems and research prototypes. It provides an
           overview and classification of different versioning paradigms
           and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore,
           it defines and relates fundamental concepts such as revisions,
           variants, configurations, and changes. In particular, we focus
           on intensional versioning, i.e., construction of versions based
           on version rules. Finally, we provide an overview of systems
           which have had significant impact on the development of the SCM
           discipline, and classify them according to a detailed taxonomy.