Making software integration really continuous

Authors:
Mário Luís Guimarães;António Rito Silva
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Venue:
FASE'12 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering
Year:
2012

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Abstract

The earlier merge conflicts are detected the easier it is to resolve them. A recommended practice is for developers to frequently integrate so that they detect conflicts earlier. However, manual integrations are cumbersome and disrupt programming flow, so developers commonly defer them; besides, manual integrations do not help to detect conflicts with uncommitted code of co-workers. Consequently, conflicts grow over time thus making resolution harder at late stages. We present a solution that continuously integrates in the background uncommitted and committed changes to support automatic detection of conflicts emerging during programming. To do so, we designed a novel merge algorithm that is O(N) complex, and implemented it inside an IDE, thus promoting a metaphor of continuous merging, similar to continuous compilation. Evidence from controlled experiments shows that our solution helps developers to become aware of and resolve conflicts earlier than when they use a mainstream version control system.