Glossary
Revision as of 18:58, 25 June 2016 by StefanoZacchiroli (talk | contribs)
This glossary contains the definition of common terms used in the Software Heritage project.
C
- Content
- a (specific version of a) file stored in the archive, identified by its cryptographic hashes (SHA1, "git-like" SHA1, SHA256) and its size
- Cryptographic hash
- a fixed-size "summary" of a stream of bytes that is easy to compute, and hard to reverse. (Cryptographic hash function Wikipedia article)
- also known as: Checksum, Digest
D
- Directory
- a set of named pointers to contents (file entries), directories (directory entries) and revisions (revision entries)
H
- Hash
- see Cryptographic hash
O
- Origin
- a location from which a coherent set of sources has been obtained.
- Also known as: Data source
- Examples:
-
- a Git repository
- a directory containing tarballs
- the history of a Debian package on snapshot.debian.org.
P
- Project
- an organized effort to develop a software product. Projects might be nested following organizational structures (sub-project, sub-sub-project), are associated to a number of human-meaningful metadata, and release software products via Origins.
R
- Release
- a revision that has been marked by a project as noteworthy with a specific, usually mnemonic, name (for instance, a version number).
- Also known as: Tag (Git-specific terminology)
- Examples:
-
- a Git tag with its name
- a tarball with its name
- a Debian source package with its version number.
- Revision
- a "point in time" snapshot in the development history of a project.
- Also known as: Commit (VCS terminology)
- Examples:
-
- a Git commit
S
- SHA
- (Secure Hash Algorithm) a family of Cryptographic hashes published by the NIST (SHA Wikipedia article)
V
- VCS
- acronym for Version Control System
- Examples: Git, Subversion, Mercurial