Coordinated Editing of Versioned Packages in the JP Programming Environment

As part of an investigation of scalable development techniques for systems written in the Javaℳ programming language, the Forest Project is building JP, a prototype distributed programming environment. For extensibility and usability, a mechanism is required to coordinate the activity of multiple editor programs (each specializing in particular source types) with the JP versioning system. The JP architecture makes it possible, using a very simple framework, to coordinate loosely coupled Java-implemented editors that share no data representations with one another or with the versioning system. This framework also supports a streamlined user model for editing that keeps users' version awareness to an absolute minimum during routine development tasks. This architecture relies on two key technologies: orthogonally persistent object storage, and orthogonal versioning of hierarchical, immutable, source objects.