A library stores and tracks the editions, versions, and releases of components that your team creates. A library stores all source code and compiled code. As your team creates and modifies components, it stores all changes made in the images.

Those stored changes are immediately available to all team members using an image connected to the library. You can view and copy components immediately after other members of your team create them. This does not mean, however, that your image will be updated when another member of your team changes a component. To incorporate changes to software made by another team member into your image, you generally reload the new version of that component. The Enterprise product architecture is a highly dynamic environment that successfully supports concurrent software development, yet also provides the controls necessary for serious software engineering.

One library can support many platforms. For example, a library on Linux can support Windows and Linux images. Thus, a library might store multiple compiled representations of a single piece of source code, one for each platform. For more information on setting up your image to access a library, see Setting up configuration files.

The library is a single file. The size of a library can be up to 16 MB, but it is limited by your operating system. For information on the maximum size of a library, refer to the product readme file. If your library is approaching the maximum size allowed, you should either create a new library or clone the current library. See Library operations for more information.