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"The Vesta Repository: A File System Extension for Software Development"
Sheng-Yang Chiu, Roy Levin
June 14, 1993.  34 pages


Conventional file systems are increasingly recognized as an unsuitable
basis for software configuration management, especially for large systems. 
While ordinary file systems have many useful properties, their facilities 
for managing coordinated changes that span many files are weak. To address 
this problem, the Vesta configuration management system implements a file 
system extension that tailors the file abstraction to the needs of
large-scale software development.

This paper begins by presenting the essential properties required in the 
storage facility that underlies a successful configuration management 
system. It then defines a file-system-like abstraction derived from
those properties and explains how it can be implemented on top of a 
conventional file system.