Version Control Systems in Corporations:Centralized and Distributed-An explorative case study into the corporate use of version control systems

Abstract: Version control systems are important to all software development companies, and has been in use since the 1970s. This case study examines the e ects version control systems have on two companies' con guration management strategies, and analyzes if a particular way of working in uences the use of version control systems. The study's main contribution is an analysis in how companies work with version control systems, and what drawbacks they see in their current systems. The analysis yields both expected and unexpected results, and the implications can probably be generalized to any software development company. The units of analysis for this case study are two di erently sized software development companies in Sweden. Between them they represent both co-located and distributed teams; and using both centralized and distributed version control systems. Our conclusions are most notably that the type of version control system only has a limited e ect on the con guration management strategy. We also found that features that are desired by companies are more user-friendly graphical user interfaces, atomic commits, better merging tools, integration with project lifecycle, and better handling of dfferent file types.