The Relation of Version Control to Concurrent Programming

Abstract Version control helps coordinating a group of people that work concurrently to achieve a shared objective. Concurrency control helps coordinating a group of threads that work concurrently to achieve a shared objective. The seemingly superficial analogy between version control and concurrency control is deeper than expected. A comparison of three major flavors of version control systems with three influential and representative approaches to concurrency control exhibits a surprisingly close correspondences in terms of mechanism and workflow. The correspondence yields new perspectives on both, version control and concurrency control