Disconnected Operation in a Multi-User Software Development Environment

Software Development Environments have tradi tionally relied upon a central project database and le repository accessible to a programmer s workstation via a local area network connection The introduc tion of powerful mobile computers has demonstrated the need for a new model which allows for machines with transient network connectivity to assist program mers in product development We propose a process based checkout model by which process and product les that may be needed during a planned period of dis connectivity are pre fetched with minimal user ef fort Rather than selecting each le by hand which is tedious and error prone the user only informs the en vironment of the portion of the software development process intended to be executed while disconnected The environment is then responsible for pre fetching the necessary les We hope that this approach will enable programmers to continue working on a project without network access