Version management in distributed network environment

A distributed software development environment consists of a local area network of computers, wherein software development is done on these inter-linked computers. In this paper we describe a prototype of a distributed version control system (DVCS) which provides support for SCCS-like software version control in a distributed environment. It supports version control of software components in a location transparent manner, i.e., programmers may not know the physical location of versions. It provides increased reliability and availability which is achieved by replicating versions on different computer sites. In addition, DVCS has features to support a distributed Make which is an extension of the Make tool available on the Unix operating system. Distributed Make locates versions, compiles simultaneously these source versions on different computer sites, and finally links the compiled object modules. Load balancing heuristics have been developed in DVCS which can significantly reduce the total compilation time. DVCS has been developed on the AIX operating system which runs on a Token Ring network of IBM-RTs.