Versions Created by Promoting an Existing Version: Virtual Versions

Workspaces contain real versions, which represent changes to elements. By contrast, all versions in dynamic streams are virtual versions, created with the Promote command. Each virtual version is an alias (pointer) to some real version in a user's workspace. The Version Browser uses a solid green line to connect a virtual version in a dynamic stream to the corresponding real version in a workspace.

Exception: The Anchor and Send to Workspace commands create a virtual version in a workspace. These commands, available only in the AccuRev GUI and AccuRev Command Line Interface, do not represent a change to the element, merely the restoration of an existing version to the workspace.

In a depot with a deep stream hierarchy, it is common to successively promote a particular version to the parent stream, then to the grandparent stream, then to the great-grandparent stream, and so on. All the versions created by this series of Promote commands are aliases for the same real version. The Version Browser shows how all the virtual versions are related to the original real version.