[ excerpt from developer's web site ]

Why yet another version control system? All other version control
systems require that you keep careful track of the relationships
between branches so as not have to repeatedly merge the same
conflicts. Codeville is much more anarchic. It allows you to update
from or commit to any repository at any time with no unnecessary
re-merges.

Codeville works by creating an identifier for each change which is
done, and remembering the list of all changes which have been applied
to each file and the last change which modified each line in each
file. When there's a conflict, it checks to see if one of the two
sides has already been applied to the other one, and if so makes
the other side win automatically. When there's an actual not
automatically mergeable version conflict, Codeville behaves in
almost exactly the same way as CVS.

For subtle but very important reasons Codeville actually versions
spaces between lines, rather than the lines themselves. If you want
to know the complete accurate details of how it works, you can look
at the slides. Beyond that, I suggest reading the source.

WWW: http://www.codeville.org/