VRCS: integrating version control and module management using interactive three-dimensional graphics

Version control and module management are very important in practical software development. In UNIX, the Revision Control System (RCS) or the Source Code Control System (SCCS) is used in general as a version control tool. However, they (1) lack the ability to explicitly display version changes; (2) require complicated commands to be typed; and (3) lack the ability to manage multiple files and modules. This paper proposes a solution for these issues by applying 3D visualization. A prototype system called VRCS (Visual RCS) was developed, in which each piece of version information stored in an RCS history file is displayed as a 2D tree by taking the z-axis as time. Other 2D trees are laid out in 3D space in the same way. In our visualization, files which compose a certain release of the software are connected by a line called a relation-link. By using GUIs, users can check in/out each version easily and interactively. More importantly, just by choosing the relation-link, a certain release is rebuilt automatically.