SRC Research Report 108
SRC Research Report 108
Vesta is a highly flexible configuration management system that supports large-scale development. Vesta provides a repository of immutable objects and a functional programming language for writing concise yet complete descriptions of configurations.
A Vesta bridge is a set of related functions and data types provided by tool builders to a Vesta environment. For instance, a C bridge might include a function for compiling C sources and a function for linking compiled C sources into executable images.
Vesta has supported development on a significant scale. The Vesta prototype included several low-aspiration bridges that encapsulated existing tools without modification; these bridges were straightforward to write. Vesta also included one high-aspiration bridge, Vulcan, a compiler server based on abstract-syntax trees. Vulcan gained both functionality and performance from its integration with Vesta. Both types of bridge benefited from Vesta's single, uniform naming facility that replaced ad hoc name spaces of traditional environments.
Bridges themselves are described and configured within Vesta. This allows tool builders to provide consistent collections of tools, control their evolution, and manage their installation using Vesta.
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