Comment by lispm

> The OP has a good criticism of why this is a bad idea. It's an old idea, mostly from LISP land, where early systems saved the whole LISP environment state. Source control? What's that?

Symbolics Genera can save (incremental and complete) images (-> "Worlds"). The image tracks all the sources loaded into it. The sources/files/docs/... of the software is stored on a central (or local) file server.

I can for example start an initial world and load it with all the wanted software in the various versions I want. Maybe I save a new world from that.

I can also start an pre-loaded world and incrementally update the software: write patches, create new minor/major versions, load patches and updates from the central server, install updates from distributions, ... Maybe save new worlds.

The "System Construction Tool" tracks what code is loaded in what version from where.