An Integrative Model for Configuration Management and Version Control

In general the configuration management task is about the description, instantiation and building of systems from components. Version control on the other hand deals with storing information about and structuring the evolution of components. Seen in isolation each of the two tasks are well understood. When they are integrated into one activity, however, there are many pitfalls to be avoided. We give a careful analysis of the problems and show how a proper integration should be made. We propose three-dimensional graphs as a model which allows us to still deal with configurations and versions in an orthogonal and independent way. Yet we obtain a fully integrated and more general model than previously seen.