Version control is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code text files, but generally any type of file.
Software configuration management (SCM), a.k.a. software change and configuration management (SCCM), is the software engineering practice of tracking and controlling changes to a software system; part of the larger cross-disciplinary field of configuration management (CM). SCM includes version control and the establishment of baselines.
IBM DevOps Code ClearCase (also known as IBM Rational ClearCase) is a family of computer software tools that supports software configuration management (SCM) of source code and other software development assets. It also supports design-data management of electronic design artifacts, thus enabling hardware and software co-development. ClearCase includes revision control and forms the basis for configuration management at large and medium-sized businesses, accommodating projects with hundreds or thousands of developers. It is developed by IBM.
StarTeam is a version control system used in software development, especially when a project involves multiple teams in different locations. StarTeam is an SCM and SDLC software application, created by Starbase Corporation, which was acquired by Borland in January 2003 which was acquired by Micro Focus in July 2009 and later acquired by OpenText in 2023. The application is client-server, backed by a relational database that retains all changes made to a project during its evolution as well as the project requirements, task assignments, threaded discussions and bug tracking. Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle database are supported database servers.
Monotone is an open source software tool for distributed revision control. It tracks revisions to files, groups sets of revisions into changesets, and tracks history across renames. The focus of the project is on integrity over performance. Monotone is designed for distributed operation, and makes heavy use of cryptographic primitives to track file revisions and to authenticate user actions.
Git is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively.
Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of integrating source code changes frequently and ensuring that the integrated codebase is in a workable state.
In software development, distributed version control is a form of version control in which the complete codebase, including its full history, is mirrored on every developer's computer. Compared to centralized version control, this enables automatic management branching and merging, speeds up most operations, improves the ability to work offline, and does not rely on a single location for backups. Git, the world's most popular version control system, is a distributed version control system.
CVSNT is a version control system compatible with and originally based on Concurrent Versions System (CVS), but whereas that was popular in the open-source world, CVSNT included features designed for developers working on commercial software including support for Windows, Active Directory authentication, reserved branches/locking, per-file access control lists and Unicode filenames. Also included in CVSNT were various RCS tools updated to work with more recent compilers and compatible with CVSNT.
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) is a discontinued source control program oriented towards small software development projects. Like most source control systems, SourceSafe creates a virtual library of computer files. While most commonly used for source code, SourceSafe can handle any type of file in its database, but older versions were shown to be unstable when used to store large amounts of non-textual data, such as images and compiled executables.
Branching, in version control and software configuration management, is the duplication of an object under version control. Each object can thereafter be modified separately and in parallel so that the objects become different. In this context the objects are called branches. The users of the version control system can branch any branch.
The following tables describe attributes of notable version control and software configuration management (SCM) software systems that can be used to compare and contrast the various systems.
Azure DevOps Server, formerly known as Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), is a Microsoft product that provides version control, reporting, requirements management, project management, automated builds, testing and release management capabilities. It covers the entire application lifecycle and enables DevOps capabilities. Azure DevOps can be used as a back-end to numerous integrated development environments (IDEs) but is tailored for Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse on all platforms.
Aldon is a business unit of Rocket Software. It develops, manufactures, licenses and supports software change management products for the enterprise application lifecycle management (ALM) and software change management (SCM) markets.
Rational Synergy is a software tool that provides software configuration management (SCM) capabilities for all artifacts related to software development including source code, documents and images as well as the final built software executable and libraries. Rational Synergy also provides the repository for the change management tool known as Rational Change. Together these two tools form an integrated configuration management and change management environment that is used in software development organizations that need controlled SCM processes and an understanding of what is in a build of their software.
Multi-stage continuous integration is a software development technique intended to achieve highly integrated parallel development activity while reducing the scope of integration problems.
Unity Version Control is a cross-platform commercial distributed version control tool developed by Códice Software for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems. It includes a command-line tool, native GUIs, diff and merge tool and integration with a number of IDEs. It is a full version control stack not based on Git.
Surround SCM is a software configuration management application developed by Seapine Software, now owned by Perforce since 2017. Perforce integrated the software with its Helix ALM product.
In software deployment, an environment or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. In simple cases, such as developing and immediately executing a program on the same machine, there may be a single environment, but in industrial use, the development environment and production environment are separated, often with several stages in between. This structured release management process allows phased deployment (rollout), testing, and rollback in case of problems.
