VersionWeb: A Tool for Helping Web Page Version Control
Information evolves rapidly on the World Wide Web. Because this, browser users often are surprised when previously available information is no longer available. To solve this problem, we created a software tool named VersionWeb that makes web page version control available during browsing.
The creation of web applications can be seen as a new kind of software development. Many software companies gradually are starting to adopt Software Configuration Management (SCM) as a usual tool for software development. Changes are required throughout all lifecycles of a system. During the development of large-scale software, uncontrolled modifications occur and can lead to chaos. Thus, change-management procedures must be carried out to ensure that costs and benefits are analyzed and changes are controlled. Developers of web pages (authors or webmasters) face hard work when many people are involved in the parallel development of sets of related pages. Because authors work independently on their individual copies, the integration of the copies in a final hyperdocument (merging two or more versions to generate another) becomes a complicate issue. In addition, the volume of documents involved usually is high, so modifications in these documents happen fast and are difficult to track. In fact, to provide an efficient mechanism to control change, we should combine human procedures with automatic tools like SCCS or RCS.
VersionWeb provides webmasters an easy way of controlling web page versions, through the Web itself. Additionally, during web browsing, users are able to recover previously available information from the web page, visualize the differences between different versions of the page and to notified when new versions become available. Another objective of the tool is to facilitate the cooperation among authors, allowing them to have simultaneous access to the files, manage the different versions of a file and locate changes that have been made.
To provide its main functional features, VersionWeb encapsulates CVS (Concurrent Version System), an efficient file version control system. CVS allows simultaneous access to a file. Access can be made through the Internet, and it is possible to visualize the differences between two file versions (except for binary files). CVS can run under several operating systems.
VersionWeb complements CVS by providing a web-based interface for friendlier interaction, because CVS has only a command-oriented interface. To make a CVS repository available through the Web, it has to be located in the same server as the web server for security reasons. According to this approach (shown in Figure 1), its functional components (Application Interface and CGI Script) work as follows:
Users web browsing from anywhere on the Internet interact with CVS through the VersionWeb Application Interface and submit requests to the web server (in general, encapsulating CVS commands).
A CGI script (physically located on the WWW server) receives and identifies the requests from the users.
The CGI script that received the request makes a call to the CVS to pass it the command to be run.
The CVS runs the command and returns the results to the CGI script.
The CGI script sends the results to the user by creating an HTML page using the request results.
Figure 1. Basic Architecture of VersionWeb
As shown in Figure 1, the CGI Scripts and CVS repository are located physically in the same computer that hosts the WWW server. We use CGI scripts because they require simplified programming. Furthermore, the web user, running from a client browser, does not have to install the CVS software in his or her local machine to run VersionWeb.
All tasks are run in the server. Because CVS itself controls the concurrent access to the files, there is no missing information or redundancy. To run VersionWeb, the user needs only a browser.
The web-based interface of VersionWeb was developed to facilitate user interaction with CVS. Because CVS has only a command-oriented interface, many developers have avoided using it. The modular structure of VersionWeb is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. VersionWeb Modules
VersionWeb has three main interfaces to support the three different roles of its users: general users (specific groups of browsing users), administrators and authors. After passing through the VersionWeb authentication module, the user has access to one of the three basics interfaces of VersionWeb according to his or her role.
Figure 3. User Authentication
If the user has been authenticated as a general user (belonging to a specific group), he has access to the interface shown in Figure 4. This type of interface, for general users, is accessible through the page in which the user is browsing.
Figure 4. Main Interface for Browser Users
This interface has a link to some modules of the tool, which are responsible for showing links to all the page's versions and to the following options:
Retrieve any version of the page.
See the differences between page versions.
Notify of newly available versions.
Send criticisms or suggestions to authors related to the page.
If the user has been authenticated as an author, he has access to the interface shown in Figure 5, which shows the CVS repository content requested during user authentication.
Figure 5. File Management in VersionWeb
This interface offers the basics options to manipulate files and directories and to access CVS operations like:
List Directory: lists the contents of a directory.
Up Level: goes up one level in the directory tree.
Rename: renames a directory or file.
Delete: removes a directory or file.
Remote Checkout: makes a remote checkout of the current file version (in the server side). This option must be used when doing small changes in text files for immediate commitment. The file content is edited in a browser window.
Local Checkout: makes a local checkout of a selected file current version. This operation lists a directory of files in a new browser window for downloading.
Versions History: shows the history log of all versions of a file.
Versions List: opens a new window with all versions and branches of a file with remote and local checkout operations for each version.
Diffs: allows the author to visualize the differences in content between two versions of a file.
Create directory: creates one directory inside the CVS repository.
Add file: uploads a file to the CVS repository.
Commit of a local checkout: makes the commit of changed files from a local checkout.
One important VersionWeb feature is to show visually the differences between two versions of one file with colors, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Visualization of Differences between Two Versions of One HTML Page
If the user has been authenticated as an administrator, he has access to the interface shown in Figure 7 and can manage all other VersionWeb users.
Figure 7. Management of Users
This interface offers the following options for management:
Insert: inserts one user in the list of general users, authors or administrators.
Change: changes data of an user.
Delete: removes a user from the list.
Transfer: moves a user from one list to another.
Installing VersionWeb is simple. The user needs to have installed CVS (version 1.10 or higher) for Linux, compile the VersionWeb source files and create a CVS repository. VersionWeb is available for download at versionweb.sourceforge.net. Included in the downloaded material are a command file for compilation (using gcc), an install file and a user manual.
Where to find the CVS: www.cvshome.org
Where to find the VersionWeb: versionweb.sourceforge.net
Information about us: java.icmc.usp.br
email: renata@cc.gatech.edu
