Regression containment through source change isolation

Abstract

Effective regression containment is an important factor in the design of development and testing processes for large software projects, especially when many developers are doing concurrent work on a common set of sources. Source change isolation provides an inexpensive, alternative to mechanical analytical methods for identifying the cause of software regressions. It also provides the advantage of enabling regressions to be eliminated by reversing the effect of source changes that introduced errant behavior, without the need to write new code, and without halting other development work on the same software. Deliverability is also improved.