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On the relation between Github communication activity and merge conflicts.

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Title: On the relation between Github communication activity and merge conflicts.
Authors: Vale, Gustavo1 vale@fim.uni-passau.de, Schmid, Angelika1, Santos, Alcemir Rodrigues2, de Almeida, Eduardo Santana3, Apel, Sven4
Source: Empirical Software Engineering. Jan2020, Vol. 25 Issue 1, p402-433. 32p.
Subjects: Communication, Revision control (Computer science), Computer programming, Rank correlation (Statistics), Bivariate analysis
Abstract: Version control systems assist developers in managing concurrent changes to a common code base by tracking all code contributions over time. A notorious problem is that, when integrating code contributions, merge conflicts may occur and resolving them is a time-consuming and error-prone task. There is a popular belief that communication and collaboration success are mutually dependent. So, it is believed that great communication activity helps to avoid merge conflicts. However, in practice, the role of communication activity for merge conflicts to occur or to be avoided has not been thoroughly investigated. To better understand this relation, we analyzed the history of 30 popular open-source projects involving 19 thousand merge scenarios. Methodologically, we used a bivariate (Spearman's rank correlation) and a multivariate (principal component analysis and partial correlations) analysis to quantify their correlation. In bivariate analysis, we found a weak positive correlation between GitHub communication activity and the number of merge conflicts. However, in the multivariate analysis, the positive correlation disappeared, not supporting the intuition that GitHub communication helps to avoid merge conflicts. Interestingly, we found that the strength of this relationship depends on the merge scenarios' characteristics, such as the number of lines of code changed. Puzzled by these unexpected results, we investigated each covariate, which provided justifications for our findings. The main conclusion from our study is that GitHub communication activity itself does not support the emergence or avoidance of merge conflicts even though such communication is associated only with merge scenario code changes or among developers only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Empirical Software Engineering is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Database: Engineering Source
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Communication%22">Communication</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Revision+control+%28Computer+science%29%22">Revision control (Computer science)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Computer+programming%22">Computer programming</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Rank+correlation+%28Statistics%29%22">Rank correlation (Statistics)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Bivariate+analysis%22">Bivariate analysis</searchLink>
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  Data: Version control systems assist developers in managing concurrent changes to a common code base by tracking all code contributions over time. A notorious problem is that, when integrating code contributions, merge conflicts may occur and resolving them is a time-consuming and error-prone task. There is a popular belief that communication and collaboration success are mutually dependent. So, it is believed that great communication activity helps to avoid merge conflicts. However, in practice, the role of communication activity for merge conflicts to occur or to be avoided has not been thoroughly investigated. To better understand this relation, we analyzed the history of 30 popular open-source projects involving 19 thousand merge scenarios. Methodologically, we used a bivariate (Spearman's rank correlation) and a multivariate (principal component analysis and partial correlations) analysis to quantify their correlation. In bivariate analysis, we found a weak positive correlation between GitHub communication activity and the number of merge conflicts. However, in the multivariate analysis, the positive correlation disappeared, not supporting the intuition that GitHub communication helps to avoid merge conflicts. Interestingly, we found that the strength of this relationship depends on the merge scenarios' characteristics, such as the number of lines of code changed. Puzzled by these unexpected results, we investigated each covariate, which provided justifications for our findings. The main conclusion from our study is that GitHub communication activity itself does not support the emergence or avoidance of merge conflicts even though such communication is associated only with merge scenario code changes or among developers only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Empirical Software Engineering is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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