Conclusions

Abstract

Section 1.3 set out the Vesta system’s objective: to be a software configuration management system that scales to accommodate large software, is easy to use, and produces repeatable, incremental, and consistent builds. Chapters 2–9 explained how Vesta achieves that objective, and Chapters 10–11 evaluated Vesta’s functionality and performance against its most widely used competition. To summarize briefly, Vesta:

• preserves source code immutably and immortally,

• supports both simple linear versioning and arbitrarily complex branching for parallel development,

• makes all versions directly accessible through the file system,

• provides very fast check-out and check-in using copy-on-write,

• supports distributed development with source replication, cross-repository checkout and check-in, and cross-realm access control,

• manages storage for source and derived files largely automatically,

• provides a flexible, general description language for the precise description and modular organization of software system construction,

• enables integration of new build tools within the description language without modification of either the tools or the Vesta system,

• builds software configurations repeatably, incrementally, and consistently, and

• runs as fast as Make for scratch builds and outperforms it for incremental ones.