The file system to be used for developing a large scale software system should reflect the logical structure of the software. The tree structure of the UNIX file system resembles the structure of a typical software design. The software design which is hierarchical in its structure, however, needs to be converted into a pure tree structure because of modules used by other modules. We suggest a method of selecting the best tree out of several candidate trees.
We also discuss schemes to isolate all the activities associated with development of a particular module or subsystem into a single directory of the file system. Various versions of the modules and the evolving system configurations can be easily managed in such a file system. A set of file commands is designed to offer those features for the development file system, which can be easily mapped into the UNLX file commands.
