User centric source control

Abstract

A user centric approach to program product distribution, including a complementary multi-vendor source control system (MVSCS) suitable for use to practice the user centric distribution approach is disclosed. Under the user centric approach, versioning control information of the source files of various program products to be installed on various user computer systems are maintained on a user computer system by user computer system basis. Each user computer system or its proxy is provided with a portion or an entire MVSCS to facilitate receipt and storage into a common repository for the user computer system versioning control information of different source files of different software vendors, and to facilitate retrieval of selective versions of the different source files for the user computer system using versioning control information stored in the common repository for the user computer system. In one embodiment, the MVSCS is further equipped to facilitate receipt and storage into a common source library, the different source files in base/delta form identified by corresponding universally unique identifiers (UUID), and the versioning control information includes predecessor UUID information. In one embodiment, both the common repository and the common source library, as well as the entire MVSCS are disposed on the user computer system.