History of software configuration management

Last updated November 30, 2023

The history of software configuration management (SCM) in computing can be traced back as early as the 1950s, when CM (for Configuration Management), originally for hardware development and production control, was being applied to software development. The first software configuration management was most likely done manually. Eventually, software tools were written to manage software changes. History records tend to be based on tools and companies, and lend concepts to a secondary plane.

Timeline

Early 1960s or even late 1950s: CDC UPDATE and IBM IEB_UPDATE.^[1]
Late 1960s into 1970s: The Librarian is released by Applied Data Research and provides an alternative to keeping programs on punched card decks for the IBM mainframe market.^[2]
Late 1960s, early 1970s: Professor Leon Pressor at the University of California, Santa Barbara produced a thesis on change and configuration control. This concept was a response to a contract he was working on with a defense contractor who made aircraft engines for the US Navy.
Early 1970s: Unix make .
By 1970 CDC update was an advanced product.
Circa 1972: Bell Labs paper describing the original diff algorithm.
1972, with an IEEE paper in 1975: source code control system, SCCS, Marc Rochkind Bell Labs. Originally programmed in SNOBOL for OS/360; subsequently rewritten in C for Unix (used diff for comparing files).
1970s: Lisle, Illinois-based Pansophic Systems offered PANVALET, which was an early source code control system for the mainframe market.^[3]
1975: Professor Pressor's work eventually grew into a commercially available product called Change and Configuration Control (CCC) which was sold by the SoftTool corporation.
Revision Control System (RCS, Walter Tichy).
Early 1980s: patch (around 1985, Larry Wall).
1984: Aide-de-Camp
1986: Concurrent Version System (CVS).
2000: Subversion initiated by CollabNet.
Early 2000s (decade): distributed revision control systems like BitKeeper and GNU arch become viable.

Background

Until the 1980s, SCM could only be understood as CM applied to software development.^[4] Some basic concepts such as identification and baseline (well-defined point in the evolution of a project) were already clear, but what was at stake was a set of techniques oriented towards the control of the activity, and using formal processes, documents, request forms, control boards etc.

It is only after this date that the use of software tools applying directly to software artefacts representing the actual resources, has allowed SCM to grow as an autonomous entity (from traditional CM).

The use of different tools has actually led to very distinct emphases.

traditional CM for Software, typically around Change Management (examples: Continuus, CVS or ClearCase UCM)
line oriented management, based on patches or Change Sets
focused on Derived Objects and Build Management (example: Base ClearCase/clearmake)

Another view

First generation

SCCS (first released in 1973) and DSEE (considered a predecessor of Atria ClearCase), described in 1984,^[5] are two other notable VCS software tools. These tools, along with Revision Control System (RCS), are generally considered the first generation of VCS as automated software tools.^[6]

Second generation

After the first generation VCS, tools such as CVS and Subversion, which feature a locally centralized repository, could be considered as the second generation VCS. Specifically, CVS (Concurrent Versions System) was developed on top of RCS structure, improving scalability of the tool for larger groups, and later PRCS,^[7] a simpler CVS-like tool which also uses RCS-like files, but improves upon the delta compression by using Xdelta instead.

By 2006 or so, Subversion was considered to be the most popular and widely in use VCS tool from this generation and filled important weaknesses of CVS.^{[ according to whom? ]} Later SVK developed with the goal of remote contribution feature, but still the foundation of its design were similar to its predecessors.^[6]

Third generation

As Internet connectivity improved and geographically distributed software development became more common, tools emerged that did not rely on a shared central project repository. These allow users to maintain independent repositories (or forks) of a project and communicate revisions via changesets. BitKeeper, Git, Monotone, darcs, Mercurial, and bzr are some examples of third generation version control systems.^[6]

Related Research Articles

Concurrent Versions System is a revision control system originally developed by Dick Grune in July 1986.

In software engineering, version control is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections of information. Version control is a component of software configuration management.

Revision Control System(RCS) is an early implementation of a version control system (VCS). It is a set of UNIX commands that allow multiple users to develop and maintain program code or documents. With RCS, users can make their own revisions of a document, commit changes, and merge them. RCS was originally developed for programs but is also useful for text documents or configuration files that are frequently revised.

Apache Subversion is a software versioning and revision control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS).

In software engineering, software configuration management is the task of tracking and controlling changes in the software, part of the larger cross-disciplinary field of configuration management. SCM practices include revision control and the establishment of baselines. If something goes wrong, SCM can determine the "what, when, why and who" of the change. If a configuration is working well, SCM can determine how to replicate it across many hosts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Code Co-op</span>

Code Co-op is the peer-to-peer revision control system made by Reliable Software.

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.

The computer tool patch is a Unix program that updates text files according to instructions contained in a separate file, called a patch file. The patch file is a text file that consists of a list of differences and is produced by running the related diff program with the original and updated file as arguments. Updating files with patch is often referred to as applying the patch or simply patching the files.

Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes in any set of computer files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers who are collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.

Sun WorkShop TeamWare is a distributed source code revision control system made by Sun Microsystems. It was first announced in November 1992 as SPARCworks/TeamWare and ProWorks/TeamWare and made commercially available in 1993. Last available as part of the Forte Developer 6 update 2 product, TeamWare is no longer being offered for sale, and is not part of the Sun Studio product.

Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TortoiseSVN</span>

TortoiseSVN is a Subversion client, implemented as a Microsoft Windows shell extension, that helps programmers manage different versions of the source code for their programs. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License.

In software development, version control is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs or other collections of information such that revisions have a logical and consistent organization. The following tables include general and technical information on notable version control and software configuration management (SCM) software. For SCM software not suitable for source code, see Comparison of open-source configuration management software.

Plastic SCM is a cross-platform commercial distributed version control tool developed by Códice Software Inc. It is available 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.

Computer Associates Panvalet is a revision control and source code management system originally developed by Pansophic Systems for mainframe computers such as the IBM System z and IBM System/370 running the z/OS and z/VSE operating systems.

The Librarian is a version control system and source code management software product originally developed by Applied Data Research for IBM mainframe computers. It was designed to supplant physical punched card decks as a way of maintaining programs, but kept a card model in terms of its interface. During the 1970s and 1980s it was in use at thousands of IBM mainframe installations and was one of the best-selling software products in the computer industry.

References

↑ "Obsolete: Configuration Management Frequently Asked Questions".
↑ Goetz, Martin (3 May 2002). "An Interview with Martin Goetz" (Interview). Interviewed by Jeffrey R. Yost. Washington, D.C.: Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. pp. 5–7. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
↑ Oral history interview with Joseph Piscopo, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Piscopo founded Pansophic Systems in 1969 and led it until his retirement in 1987. Interview discusses the development of Panvalet and the acquisition of Easytrieve.
↑ J.K. Buckle (1982). Software Configuration Management. ISBN 0-333-30719-4.
↑ Leblang, David B.; Chase, Robert P. (May 1984). "Computer-Aided Software Engineering in a distributed workstation environment". ACM SIGPLAN Notices. 19 (5): 104–112. doi:10.1145/390011.808255.
1 2 3 Raymond, Eric. "Understanding Version-Control Systems (DRAFT)". www.catb.org. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
↑ MacDonald, Joshua P (9 May 2004). "PRCS, the Project Revision Control System" . Retrieved 29 October 2021.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] "Obsolete: Configuration Management Frequently Asked Questions".

[2] Goetz, Martin (3 May 2002). "An Interview with Martin Goetz" (Interview). Interviewed by Jeffrey R. Yost. Washington, D.C.: Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. pp. 5–7. Retrieved 26 May 2023.

[3] Oral history interview with Joseph Piscopo, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Piscopo founded Pansophic Systems in 1969 and led it until his retirement in 1987. Interview discusses the development of Panvalet and the acquisition of Easytrieve.

[4] J.K. Buckle (1982). Software Configuration Management. ISBN 0-333-30719-4.

[5] Leblang, David B.; Chase, Robert P. (May 1984). "Computer-Aided Software Engineering in a distributed workstation environment". ACM SIGPLAN Notices. 19 (5): 104–112. doi:10.1145/390011.808255.

[:0-6] 1 2 3 Raymond, Eric. "Understanding Version-Control Systems (DRAFT)". www.catb.org. Retrieved 13 February 2017.

[7] MacDonald, Joshua P (9 May 2004). "PRCS, the Project Revision Control System" . Retrieved 29 October 2021.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]