A survey on model versioning approaches

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a feature‐based characterization of version control systems (VCSs), providing an overview about the state‐of‐the‐art of versioning systems dedicated to modeling artifacts.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a literature study of existing approaches, a description of the features of versioning systems is established. Special focus is set on three‐way merging which is an integral component of optimistic versioning. This characterization is employed on current model versioning systems, which allows the derivation of challenges in this research area.Findings – The results of the evaluation show that several challenges need to be addressed in future developments of VCSs and merging tools in order to allow the parallel development of model artifacts.Practical implications – Making model‐driven engineering (MDE) a success requires supporting the parallel development of model artifacts as is done nowadays for text‐based artifacts. Therefore, model versioning ca...

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