Version Control System Requirements

(NOTE: See VersionControlSummit2006, [1] and [2] for some newer information)

Set of requirements compiled during a version control system (VCS) meeting in March 2006. Some of these requirements explicitly conflict; it's not expected that a single solution will fulfill all of these. These are also not prioritized in any way; that's still an outstanding task.

• changesets

• move/rename files/directories with full history and appropriate behaviour with old branches/pull by date

• atomic operations
  • every operation versioned: tagging, branching, etc. are part of history (or at least logged)

• private/local branching
  • sane merging
    • history-sensitive merging

• topic branches
  • with control over when you pull in outside changes into your branch

• ability to tag/branch bugzilla/js/etc. subcomponents of a tree without tagging entire tree

• tools integration
  • blame (like current bonsai)
  • revision history
  • source browsing
  • source indexing
  • tree closure/override
  • reports/metrics
    • commits, committers, etc.

• access control
  • restrict people to specific areas
  • restrict areas/branches to specific people
  • group membership
  • being able to query where people have access
  • audited ACL changes
  • versioned ACLs

• cross-platform (unix/mac/windows)

• open source

• file forking/diverging with history

• cherry-picking of changesets

• offline operation
  • offline diff
  • offline commit/merge/etc.
  • partial history pull
    • including zero history

• tree information
  • tree-wide diff
  • selective diff
  • known/unknown/missing files

• selective commit

• work with standard patches

• stable/reliable/maintained

• charset awareness

• line-ending conversion

• binary files (efficient)

• GUI tool for basic operations

• as easy or easier than CVS for checkout/commit/diff/update/merge (on trunk and on branches)

• partial tree pulls (localizers)

• import full mozilla CVS repository
  • if we can't, why?

• fast working directory updates
  • (checkout-by-date -> tip, branch -> branch, ...)

• pull historical version and check in changes to files in historical version

• integrity checking on repository
  • checksums for error detection

• transit mechanisms
  • ssh
  • https
  • anonymous read-only (http?)

• bootstrap local repo via blob pull

• signed commits/changesets

• hooks
  • all repository operations

• bugzilla integration
  • automatic notification to bugzilla of what was checked in (add attachment based on changeset)
  • associate bugmail with committer

• keep committer ID separate from the actual person

• arbitrary versioned metadata on files/attributes
  • permission bits
  • key/value pairs