Version Control System Requirements

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(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