shape - A Software Configuration Management Tool.

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a configuration management toolkit, which integrates a dedicated version control system and shape, a significantly enhanced Make [7] program. Enhancements include full access to the version control system and support of configuration rules which control the selection process for component versions during identification, build or rebuild of system configurations. Since integration of version control was a major objective for our system, we had to face the need for a document identification scheme that goes beyond the usual way of specifying name and type of a document. As a consequence, we began to design an attributed filesystem (AFS) that introduces a much more generalized scheme for document identification. The AFS comprises concepts for version control, support for variants or status models for example. Furthermore, it helps to abstract from the particular underlying data storage system in such a way that it makes no difference whether it is an or...