The Dataverse is an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore and analyze research data. Researchers, data authors, publishers, data distributors, and affiliated institutions all receive appropriate credit via a data citation with a persistent identifier (e.g., DOI , or handle ).
56-636: A Dataverse repository hosts multiple dataverses. Each dataverse contains dataset (s) or other dataverses, and each dataset contains descriptive metadata and data files (including documentation and code that accompany the data). In 2019, Dataverse won the Duke's Choice Award for university and higher education. The Dataverse Project is housed and developed by the Dataverse Team at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University . Coding of
112-428: A patch, which is applied to HEAD (of the trunk), creating a new revision without any explicit reference to the branch, and preserving the tree structure. Thus, while the actual relations between versions form a DAG, this can be considered a tree plus merges, and the trunk itself is a line. In distributed revision control, in the presence of multiple repositories these may be based on a single original version (a root of
168-419: A version control system is used to keep track of versions of a set of files, usually to allow multiple developers to collaborate on a project. The repository keeps track of the files in the project, which is represented as a graph . A distributed version control system is made up of central and branch repositories . A central repository exists on the server. To make changes to it, a developer first works on
224-424: A branch repository, and proceeds to commit the change to the former. A code forge is a web interface to a version control system. A user can commonly browse repositories and their constituent files on the page itself. While forges are mainly used to perform version control operations, some forges allow users to host static web pages by uploading its source code (such as HTML and JavaScript , but not PHP ) to
280-447: A corollary to this is to commit only code which works and does not knowingly break existing functionality; utilizing branching to complete functionality before release; writing clear and descriptive commit messages, make what why and how clear in either the commit description or the code; and using a consistent branching strategy. Other best software development practices such as code review and automated regression testing may assist in
336-456: A different repository, this is interpreted as a merge or patch. In terms of graph theory , revisions are generally thought of as a line of development (the trunk ) with branches off of this, forming a directed tree, visualized as one or more parallel lines of development (the "mainlines" of the branches) branching off a trunk. In reality the structure is more complicated, forming a directed acyclic graph , but for many purposes "tree with merges"
392-414: A difficult manual merge when the other changes are finally checked in. In a large organization, files can be left "checked out" and locked and forgotten about as developers move between projects - these tools may or may not make it easy to see who has a file checked out. Most version control systems allow multiple developers to edit the same file at the same time. The first developer to "check in" changes to
448-466: A feature of some systems such as word processors , spreadsheets , collaborative web docs , and content management systems , e.g., Misplaced Pages's page history . Version control includes viewing old versions and enables reverting a file to a previous version. As teams develop software, it is common for multiple versions of the same software to be deployed in different sites and for the developers to work simultaneously on updates. Bugs or features of
504-592: A file for exclusive write access, even when a merging capability exists. Most revision control tools will use only one of these similar terms (baseline, label, tag) to refer to the action of identifying a snapshot ("label the project") or the record of the snapshot ("try it with baseline X "). Typically only one of the terms baseline , label , or tag is used in documentation or discussion ; they can be considered synonyms. In most projects, some snapshots are more significant than others, such as those used to indicate published releases, branches, or milestones. When both
560-491: A group of changes final, and available to all users. Not all revision control systems have atomic commits; Concurrent Versions System lacks this feature. The simplest method of preventing " concurrent access " problems involves locking files so that only one developer at a time has write access to the central " repository " copies of those files. Once one developer "checks out" a file, others can read that file, but no one else may change that file until that developer "checks in"
616-438: A peer-to-peer approach, as opposed to the client–server approach of centralized systems. Rather than a single, central repository on which clients synchronize, each peer's working copy of the codebase is a bona-fide repository. Distributed revision control conducts synchronization by exchanging patches (change-sets) from peer to peer. This results in some important differences from a centralized system: Rather, communication
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#1732869314437672-663: A repository. This is usually done in order to provide documentation or a landing page for a software project. The use of repositories as a place to upload web documents allows version control to be integrated, and additionally allows quick iteration because changes are pushed through the Version Control System instead of having to upload the file through a protocol like FTP . Examples of this kind of service include GitHub Pages and GitLab Pages . Version control system Version control (also known as revision control , source control , and source code management )
728-400: A revision older than its immediate predecessor, then the resulting graph is instead a directed tree (each node can have more than one child), and has multiple tips, corresponding to the revisions without children ("latest revision on each branch"). In principle the resulting tree need not have a preferred tip ("main" latest revision) – just various different revisions – but in practice one tip
784-404: A simple example, when editing a computer file, the data stored in memory by the editing program is the working copy, which is committed by saving. Concretely, one may print out a document, edit it by hand, and only later manually input the changes into a computer and save it. For source code control, the working copy is instead a copy of all files in a particular revision, generally stored locally on
840-411: A simple line, with a single latest version, the "HEAD" revision or tip . In graph theory terms, drawing each revision as a point and each "derived revision" relationship as an arrow (conventionally pointing from older to newer, in the same direction as time), this is a linear graph . If there is branching, so multiple future revisions are based on a past revision, or undoing, so a revision can depend on
896-552: A stand-alone software guide to local data, preweb software, and tools to transfer cataloging information by FTP to other sites across campus automatically at designated times. A collaboration with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), the Harvard Library , and Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT): the Harvard Dataverse is a repository for sharing, citing, analyzing, and preserving research data. It
952-401: A way to roll back to earlier versions should the need arise. Many version control systems identify the version of a file as a number or letter, called the version number , version , revision number , revision , or revision level . For example, the first version of a file might be version 1 . When the file is changed the next version is 2 . Each version is associated with a timestamp and
1008-730: Is a national instance of the Dataverse repository hosted by OCUL 's Scholars Portal at the University of Toronto. Borealis allows institutions to offer a Dataverse service without operating and maintaining the software themselves. Most academic institutions offering a Dataverse service in Canada subscribe to the Borealis service. The associated community of practice is organized through the Digital Research Alliance of Canada 's Network of Experts via
1064-439: Is an adequate approximation. Revisions occur in sequence over time, and thus can be arranged in order, either by revision number or timestamp. Revisions are based on past revisions, though it is possible to largely or completely replace an earlier revision, such as "delete all existing text, insert new text". In the simplest case, with no branching or undoing, each revision is based on its immediate predecessor alone, and they form
1120-430: Is generally identified as HEAD. When a new revision is based on HEAD, it is either identified as the new HEAD, or considered a new branch. The list of revisions from the start to HEAD (in graph theory terms, the unique path in the tree, which forms a linear graph as before) is the trunk or mainline. Conversely, when a revision can be based on more than one previous revision (when a node can have more than one parent ),
1176-467: Is inefficient as many near-identical copies of the program have to be maintained. This requires a lot of self-discipline on the part of developers and often leads to mistakes. Since the code base is the same, it also requires granting read-write-execute permission to a set of developers, and this adds the pressure of someone managing permissions so that the code base is not compromised, which adds more complexity. Consequently, systems to automate some or all of
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#17328693144371232-425: Is only necessary when pushing or pulling changes to or from other peers. Following best practices is necessary to obtain the full benefits of version control. Best practice may vary by version control tool and the field to which version control is applied. The generally accepted best practices in software development include: making incremental, small, changes; making commits which involve only one task or fix --
1288-625: Is open to all scientific data from all disciplines worldwide. Dataverse is also installed in the countries of the European Union to preserve data collected by research communities of Netherlands, Germany, France and Finland. The largest Dataverse repository is called DataverseNL and located in the Netherlands providing data management services for 11 Dutch Universities. A similar service is being developed in Norway (cf. DataverseNO). In Canada, Borealis
1344-402: Is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files ; primarily source code text files , but generally any type of file. Version control is a component of software configuration management . A version control system is a software tool that automates version control. Alternatively, version control is embedded as
1400-434: Is used for storing scientific data. CKAN provides similar functions and is widely used for open data. Repository (version control) In version control systems , a repository is a data structure that stores metadata for a set of files or directory structure . Depending on whether the version control system in use is distributed, like Git or Mercurial , or centralized, like Subversion , CVS , or Perforce ,
1456-625: The Dataverse (previously known as Dataverse Network) software began in 2006 under the leadership of Mercè Crosas and Gary King . The earlier Virtual Data Center (VDC) project, which spanned 1999-2006, was organized by Micah Altman , Gary King , and Sidney Verba as a collaboration between the Harvard-MIT Data Center (now part of IQSS) and the Harvard University Library . Precursors to the VDC date to 1987, comprising such entities as
1512-543: The Dataverse North Expert Group, a coordination, collaboration and communication instance. There are several other Dataverse repositories installed in Universities and organizations around the world. Here is a list of some Dataverse repositories: The Dataverse currently has multiple open APIs available, which allow for searching, depositing and accessing data. DSpace is often compared with Dataverse and
1568-462: The central repository always succeeds. The system may provide facilities to merge further changes into the central repository, and preserve the changes from the first developer when other developers check in. Merging two files can be a very delicate operation, and usually possible only if the data structure is simple, as in text files . The result of a merge of two image files might not result in an image file at all. The second developer checking in
1624-456: The code will need to take care with the merge, to make sure that the changes are compatible and that the merge operation does not introduce its own logic errors within the files. These problems limit the availability of automatic or semi-automatic merge operations mainly to simple text-based documents, unless a specific merge plugin is available for the file types. The concept of a reserved edit can provide an optional means to explicitly lock
1680-410: The data as a whole, which is less intuitive for simple changes but simplifies more complex changes. When data that is under revision control is modified, after being retrieved by checking out, this is not in general immediately reflected in the revision control system (in the repository ), but must instead be checked in or committed. A copy outside revision control is known as a "working copy". As
1736-418: The developer to easily undo changes. This gives the developer more opportunity to experiment, eliminating the fear of breaking existing code. Branching assists with deployment. Branching and merging, the production, packaging, and labeling of source code patches and the easy application of patches to code bases, simplifies the maintenance and concurrent development of the multiple code bases associated with
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1792-456: The developer's computer; in this case saving the file only changes the working copy, and checking into the repository is a separate step. If multiple people are working on a single data set or document, they are implicitly creating branches of the data (in their working copies), and thus issues of merging arise, as discussed below. For simple collaborative document editing, this can be prevented by using file locking or simply avoiding working on
1848-423: The developers may end up overwriting each other's work. Centralized revision control systems solve this problem in one of two different "source management models": file locking and version merging. An operation is atomic if the system is left in a consistent state even if the operation is interrupted. The commit operation is usually the most critical in this sense. Commits tell the revision control system to make
1904-407: The electronic tracking of changes to CAD files (see product data management ), supplanting the "manual" electronic implementation of traditional revision control. Traditional revision control systems use a centralized model where all the revision control functions take place on a shared server . If two developers try to change the same file at the same time, without some method of managing access
1960-460: The entire code base and can focus instead on the code that introduced the problem. Version control enhances collaboration in multiple ways. Since version control can identify conflicting changes, i.e. incompatible changes made to the same lines of code, there is less need for coordination among developers. The packaging of commits, branches, and all the associated commit messages and version labels, improves communication between developers, both in
2016-446: The following of version control best practices. Costs and benefits will vary dependent upon the version control tool chosen and the field in which it is applied. This section speaks to the field of software development, where version control is widely applied. In addition to the costs of licensing the version control software, using version control requires time and effort. The concepts underlying version control must be understood and
2072-449: The history of changes made to those files. Exactly how each version control system handles storing those changes, however, differs greatly. For instance, Subversion in the past relied on a database instance but has since moved to storing its changes directly on the filesystem. These differences in storage techniques have generally led to diverse uses of version control by different groups, depending on their needs. In software engineering,
2128-438: The identification of what problems exist, how long they have existed, and determining problem scope and solutions. Previous versions can be installed and tested to verify conclusions reached by examination of code and commit messages. Version control can greatly simplify debugging. The application of a test case to multiple versions can quickly identify the change which introduced a bug. The developer need not be familiar with
2184-724: The moment and over time. Better communication, whether instant or deferred, can improve the code review process, the testing process, and other critical aspects of the software development process. Some of the more advanced revision-control tools offer many other facilities, allowing deeper integration with other tools and software-engineering processes. Plugins are often available for IDEs such as Oracle JDeveloper , IntelliJ IDEA , Eclipse , Visual Studio , Delphi , NetBeans IDE , Xcode , and GNU Emacs (via vc.el). Advanced research prototypes generate appropriate commit messages. Terminology can vary from system to system, but some terms in common usage include: An approved revision of
2240-412: The other as secondary, merged into the first with or without its own revision history. Engineering revision control developed from formalized processes based on tracking revisions of early blueprints or bluelines . This system of control implicitly allowed returning to an earlier state of the design, for cases in which an engineering dead-end was reached in the development of the design. A revision table
2296-418: The person making the change. Revisions can be compared, restored, and, with some types of files, merged. IBM's OS/360 IEBUPDTE software update tool dates back to 1962, arguably a precursor to version control system tools. Two source management and version control packages that were heavily used by IBM 360/370 installations were The Librarian and Panvalet . A full system designed for source code control
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2352-407: The presence of merges, the resulting graph is no longer a tree, as nodes can have multiple parents, but is instead a rooted directed acyclic graph (DAG). The graph is acyclic since parents are always backwards in time, and rooted because there is an oldest version. Assuming there is a trunk, merges from branches can be considered as "external" to the tree – the changes in the branch are packaged up as
2408-400: The resulting process is called a merge , and is one of the most complex aspects of revision control. This most often occurs when changes occur in multiple branches (most often two, but more are possible), which are then merged into a single branch incorporating both changes. If these changes overlap, it may be difficult or impossible to merge, and require manual intervention or rewriting. In
2464-845: The revision control process have been developed. This ensures that the majority of management of version control steps is hidden behind the scenes. Moreover, in software development, legal and business practice, and other environments, it has become increasingly common for a single document or snippet of code to be edited by a team, the members of which may be geographically dispersed and may pursue different and even contrary interests. Sophisticated revision control that tracks and accounts for ownership of changes to documents and code may be extremely helpful or even indispensable in such situations. Revision control may also track changes to configuration files , such as those typically stored in /etc or /usr/local/etc on Unix systems. This gives system administrators another way to easily track changes made and
2520-540: The rise of distributed revision control tools such as Git . Revision control manages changes to a set of data over time. These changes can be structured in various ways. Often the data is thought of as a collection of many individual items, such as files or documents, and changes to individual files are tracked. This accords with intuitions about separate files but causes problems when identity changes, such as during renaming, splitting or merging of files. Accordingly, some systems such as Git , instead consider changes to
2576-404: The same document that someone else is working on. Revision control systems are often centralized, with a single authoritative data store, the repository, and check-outs and check-ins done with reference to this central repository. Alternatively, in distributed revision control , no single repository is authoritative, and data can be checked out and checked into any repository. When checking into
2632-404: The software are often only present in certain versions (because of the fixing of some problems and the introduction of others as the program develops). Therefore, for the purposes of locating and fixing bugs, it is vitally important to be able to retrieve and run different versions of the software to determine in which version(s) the problem occurs. It may also be necessary to develop two versions of
2688-420: The software concurrently: for instance, where one version has bugs fixed, but no new features ( branch ), while the other version is where new features are worked on ( trunk ). At the simplest level, developers could simply retain multiple copies of the different versions of the program, and label them appropriately. This simple approach has been used in many large software projects. While this method can work, it
2744-432: The technical particulars required to operate the version control software chosen must be learned. Version control best practices must be learned and integrated into the organization's existing software development practices. Management effort may be required to maintain the discipline needed to follow best practices in order to obtain useful benefit. A core benefit is the ability to keep history and revert changes, allowing
2800-420: The term baseline and either of label or tag are used together in the same context, label and tag usually refer to the mechanism within the tool of identifying or making the record of the snapshot, and baseline indicates the increased significance of any given label or tag. Most formal discussion of configuration management uses the term baseline . Distributed revision control systems (DRCS) take
2856-399: The tree), but there need not be an original root - instead there can be a separate root (oldest revision) for each repository. This can happen, for example, if two people start working on a project separately. Similarly, in the presence of multiple data sets (multiple projects) that exchange data or merge, there is no single root, though for simplicity one may think of one project as primary and
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#17328693144372912-415: The updated version (or cancels the checkout). File locking has both merits and drawbacks. It can provide some protection against difficult merge conflicts when a user is making radical changes to many sections of a large file (or group of files). If the files are left exclusively locked for too long, other developers may be tempted to bypass the revision control software and change the files locally, forcing
2968-414: The various stages of the deployment process; development, testing, staging, production, etc. There can be damage mitigation, accountability, process and design improvement, and other benefits associated with the record keeping provided by version control, the tracking of who did what, when, why, and how. When bugs arise, knowing what was done when helps with damage mitigation and recovery by assisting in
3024-417: The whole set of information in the repository may be duplicated on every user's system or may be maintained on a single server . Some of the metadata that a repository contains includes, among other things, a historical record of changes in the repository, a set of commit objects, and a set of references to commit objects, called heads . The main purpose of a repository is to store a set of files, as well as
3080-422: Was started in 1972, Source Code Control System for the same system (OS/360). Source Code Control System's introduction, having been published on December 4, 1975, historically implied it was the first deliberate revision control system. RCS followed just after, with its networked version Concurrent Versions System . The next generation after Concurrent Versions System was dominated by Subversion , followed by
3136-433: Was used to keep track of the changes made. Additionally, the modified areas of the drawing were highlighted using revision clouds. Version control is widespread in business and law. Indeed, "contract redline" and "legal blackline" are some of the earliest forms of revision control, and are still employed in business and law with varying degrees of sophistication. The most sophisticated techniques are beginning to be used for
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