Traceability Link Evolution with Version Control

Traceability links enable the possibility to trace the evolution of a project from the earliest requirements engineering phase over the design and implementation to the test phases of a project. Having a link between the artifacts resulting from these phases, a requirement can be traced to, e.g., the test report, which tested the code implementing the requirement. However, as the artifacts evolve into new versions the traceability links between these artifacts evolve as well. Concurrent work on the artifacts might result in conflicts which reflects in conflicting versions of the traceability links. Often the artifacts created in different phases of a development process are stored in different repositories. In this paper we present a version control system capable of controlling the evolutionary changes of traceability links which connect artifacts residing in different repositories and resolve the conflicts caused by concurrent work on artifacts.