VeCVL: A Visual Language for Version Control

Abstract

Version control systems (VCS), such as Subversion and Git, are pervasive in industry; they are invaluable tools for collaborative development that allow software engineers to track changes, monitor issues, merge work from multiple people, and manage releases. These tools are most effective when they are a part of a developer's habitual workflow. Unfortunately, the use of these powerful tools is often taught much later in a developer's educational career than other tools like programming languages or databases. Even an experienced student's first experience with version control can be unpleasant. In this paper, the authors analyze the workflow of two common Version Control Systems with different version controls (Subversion and Git) to build a common visual language for these systems (Version Control Visual Language, or VeCVL), and show that the same visual language applies to other version control systems.

Meeting Name

22nd International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems, DMS 2016 (2016: Nov. 25-26, Salerno, Italy)

Department(s)

Computer Science

Keywords and Phrases

Control systems; Education; Education computing; Engineering education; Information management; Multimedia systems; Collaborative development; Computer Science Education; Education technology; Educational career; Multiple people; Pedagogy; Version control; Version control system; Visual languages

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-189170640-0

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2016 Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Nov 2016

Link to Full Text

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