2026-07-23T19:19:12Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:20858 2024-09-12T05:48:34Z ddc:004 open_access

A Language-Based Version Control System for Python Carvalho, Luís Costa Seco, João Software evolution type theory We extend prior work on a language-based approach to versioned software development to support versioned programs with mutable state and evolving method interfaces. Unlike the traditional approach of mainstream version control systems, where a textual diff represents each evolution step, we treat versions as programming elements. Each evolution step, merge operation, and version relationship is represented explicitly in a multifaceted code representation. This provides static guarantees for safe code reuse from previous versions and forward and backwards compatibility between versions, allowing clients to use newly introduced code without needing to refactor their program manually. By lifting versioning to the language level, we pave the way for tools that interact with software repositories to have more insight into a system’s behavior evolution. We instantiate our work in the Python programming language and demonstrate its applicability regarding common evolution and refactoring patterns found in different versions of popular Python packages. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Luís Carvalho and João Costa Seco 2024 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 313, 38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.9 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-208586 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.9 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode