Snapstore : a version control system for everyone

Abstract

Version control systems have, for many years, been applications that are developed and maintained with software engineers in mind. However, other less technical industries and endeavors can benefit immensely from the functionality these systems provide. Unfortunately, existing version control systems, such as Git and Mercurial, have too steep a learning curve to make quick adoption feasible, especially for new or less technical users. File syncing systems, on the other hand, such as Dropbox and Google Drive are easier to learn and understand. But, they do not offer the same level of functionality as version control systems. We believe that the best from both of these types of systems can be combined to provide a simpler version control system, accessible to anyone. In this thesis, we provide two main contributions. We outline the steps needed to design a simpler, more powerful version control system by following Conceptual Design Theory. We then describe the system we created to fulfill this vision. The system, Snapstore, is the result of all the goals and ideas described by this paper.