A serverless, wide-area version control system

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Chen, Benjie, 1976-
Other Authors: Robert T. Morris.
Format: Thesis
Language:en_US
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2005
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28536
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author Chen, Benjie, 1976-
author2 Robert T. Morris.
author_facet Robert T. Morris.
Chen, Benjie, 1976-
author_sort Chen, Benjie, 1976-
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description Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.
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spelling mit-1721.1/285362019-04-10T18:34:38Z A serverless, wide-area version control system Chen, Benjie, 1976- Robert T. Morris. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-102). This thesis describes Pastwatch, a distributed version control system. Pastwatch maintains versions of users' shared files. Each version is immutable: to make changes, a user checks out a version onto the user's computer, edits the files locally, then commits the changes to create a new version. The motivation behind Pastwatch is to support wide-area read/write file sharing. An example of this type of sharing is when loosely affiliated programmers from different parts of the world collaborate to work on open-source software projects. To support such users, Pastwatch offers three properties. First, it allows users who travel frequently or whose network connections fail from time to time to access historical versions of the shared files or make new versions while disconnected. Second, Pastwatch makes the current and historical versions of the shared files highly available. For example, even when their office building experiences a power failure, users can still create new versions and retrieve other users' changes from other locations. Supporting disconnected operation is not adequate by itself in these cases; users also want to see others' changes. Third, Pastwatch avoids using dedicated servers. Running a dedicated server requires high administrative costs, expertise, and expensive equipment. Pastwatch achieves its goals using two interacting approaches. First, it maintains a local branch tree of versions on each user's computer. A user can check out versions from the local tree and commit changes into the local tree. Second, Pastwatch uses a shared branch tree in a DHT to publish users' new versions. It contacts the tree to keep a user's local branch tree up-to-date. by Benjie Chen. Ph.D. 2005-09-27T16:52:30Z 2005-09-27T16:52:30Z 2004 2004 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28536 57383922 en_US M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 102 leaves 4726852 bytes 4738749 bytes application/pdf application/pdf application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Chen, Benjie, 1976-
A serverless, wide-area version control system
title A serverless, wide-area version control system
title_full A serverless, wide-area version control system
title_fullStr A serverless, wide-area version control system
title_full_unstemmed A serverless, wide-area version control system
title_short A serverless, wide-area version control system
title_sort serverless wide area version control system
topic Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28536
work_keys_str_mv AT chenbenjie1976 aserverlesswideareaversioncontrolsystem
AT chenbenjie1976 serverlesswideareaversioncontrolsystem