An Analysis of Merge Conflicts and Resolutions in Git-based Open Source Projects

International audienceVersion control systems such as Git support parallel collaborative work and became very widespread in the open-source community. While Git offers some very interesting features, resolving conflicts that arise during synchronization of parallel changes is a time-consuming task. In this paper we present an analysis of concurrency and conflicts in official Git repository of four projects: Rails, IkiWiki, Samba and Linux Kernel. We analyse the collaboration process of these projects at specific periods revealing how change integration and conflict rates vary during project development life-cycle. We also analyse how often users decide to rollback to previous document version when the integration process generates conflicts. Finally, we discuss the mechanism adopted by Git to consider changes made on two continuous lines as conflicting

Collaborative Application Security Testing for DevSecOps: An Empirical Analysis of Challenges, Best Practices and Tool Support

DevSecOps is a software development paradigm that places a high emphasis on the culture of collaboration between developers (Dev), security (Sec) and operations (Ops) teams to deliver secure software continuously and rapidly. Adopting this paradigm effectively, therefore, requires an understanding of the challenges, best practices and available solutions for collaboration among these functional teams. However, collaborative aspects related to these teams have received very little empirical attention in the DevSecOps literature. Hence, we present a study focusing on a key security activity, Application Security Testing (AST), in which practitioners face difficulties performing collaborative work in a DevSecOps environment. Our study made novel use of 48 systematically selected webinars, technical talks and panel discussions as a data source to qualitatively analyse software practitioner discussions on the most recent trends and emerging solutions in this highly evolving field. We find that the lack of features that facilitate collaboration built into the AST tools themselves is a key tool-related challenge in DevSecOps. In addition, the lack of clarity related to role definitions, shared goals, and ownership also hinders Collaborative AST (CoAST). We also captured a range of best practices for collaboration (e.g., Shift-left security), emerging communication methods (e.g., ChatOps), and new team structures (e.g., hybrid teams) for CoAST. Finally, our study identified several requirements for new tool features and specific gap areas for future research to provide better support for CoAST in DevSecOps.Comment: Submitted to the Empirical Software Engineering journal_v

Job-embedded Coaching to Implement the Team Analysis of Preschoolers in Routines (TAPIR) Approach: Building Professional Collaboration

This inquiry primarily employed the qualitative methodology to understand the nature impact of the utilization of the Team Analysis of Preschoolers in Routines (TAPIR) approach in a novel setting. The TAPIR approach incorporates collaborative practices throughout program components including: assessment, Individualized Education Plan (IEP) development, planning, intervention, and ongoing progress monitoring. A key feature of the TAPIR approach is its focus on functional participation of preschoolers within preschool routines. Professional development (PD) (i.e. instructional support and job-embedded coaching) was provided to an inclusive early childhood program staff to support the implementation of TAPIR by teams of early childhood practitioners. Results of the 12-week inquiry, reveal insights into: (a) existing practices, (b) intensity, duration, content focus and format of the PD, (c) barriers to implementation (i.e. the relationship of beliefs to practice), (d) shared leadership strategies, and (e) the nature and efficacy of its outcomes. Limitations of the findings and implications for future research are discussed

Collaborative learning and coordination across agency boundaries to tackle wicked problems

Conventional approaches to government are confounded by issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. These open-ended and highly interdependent issues are often characterized in the literature as ‘wicked problems. Typically, policies and budgets are developed to align with organizational boundaries, making it difficult to bring the appropriate talent, knowledge and assets into an interagency approach to tackle the interdependencies of whatever wicked problem is at hand. Many governments have recognized the need for interagency coordination in the face of highly complex problems; and in response, there has been advocacy for improved approaches to increase collaboration and synchronized interagency working. However, without appreciating that the perspectives and values of the various government agencies and other stakeholders can vary widely, and often can be in conflict, interagency endeavors often start out to solve very different perceived problems. Furthermore, interagency constructs are frequently organized through periodic meetings and loose agreements. They do not develop concrete strategic and operational plans for how an integrated approach will be organized and implemented. The research described in this thesis was conducted to develop and evaluate a Systemic Intervention (boundary-exploring and multi-method) approach to designing interagency responses to wicked problems. This multi-method approach attempts to address many of the challenges to interagency design found in the literature. The Systemic Intervention approach was trialled on the wicked problem of international organized drug trafficking and its interface with local gangs in Chicago, USA. This wicked problem illustrates extreme complexity and the need for a cross-cutting design that cut across agencies, jurisdictions, and geographical boundaries. The research was conducted in two phases: (1) the creation of a common understanding of a wicked problem among multiple agencies using Boundary Critique and a new participatory Problem Structuring Method (PSM) called ‘Systemic Perspective Mapping’; and (2) the design of an interagency meta-organization using the Viable System Model (VSM), introduced to participants through a novel board game layout, so drug crime could be addressed at multiple scales. The research findings indicate that the combined use of Boundary Critique and Systemic Perspective Mapping was able to generate enough of a common understanding to provide a foundation for the design of an interagency organization. Also, the VSM Board Game effectively enabled multiple agency representatives to intimately interact with their representation of the V wicked problem and with each other in order to clearly delineate new agency responsibilities, communication mechanisms and channels, adaptive operations management, and an anticipatory function – all tailored to address the wicked problem they had structured as a group. The methodological approach developed in this research shows significant promise for transfer and adaptation to help tackle the design of interagency organizations for other wicked problems

Practice Challenges Among Social Work Mitigation Specialists and Interprofessional Supervision Methods

Social work supervision is a core component of the social work profession that is often absent for social workers in interprofessional teams. In capital defense practice settings, social workers are hired as mitigation specialists to work as members of the legal team. Informed by systems theory, the purpose of this action research study was to explore the practice challenges of social work mitigation specialists (SWMS) and how an interprofessional-focused supervision approach could be applied to resolve those issues. Six SWMS employed with capital defense agencies in Georgia and Texas were interviewed. Using a thematic coding analysis, several key themes emerged: (a) role navigation, (b) ethical dilemmas as practice challenges, (c) increased competence, and (d) team cohesion as dynamics that will improve with the implementation of an interprofessional-focused supervision approach. These findings provide understanding as to how supervision can be tailored to guide SWMS and other social workers in interprofessional settings. Recommendations for future research involve developing supervision guidelines for social work practice in interprofessional settings. Adhering to these suggestions might provide insight as to how interprofessional teams can work collaboratively, improving practice approaches and interventions to alter systems of service delivery and client outcomes. This provides the opportunity to effect social change by impacting individual practitioners and clients, as well as organizations, systems, and from a political perspective

What could the source code history tell UsAbout errors

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Ciência da Computação, 2020.Quase todos os desenvolvedores criam software usando uma abordagem de desenvolvi- mento colaborativo. Nesse cenário, após concluir a tarefa, desenvolvedores submetem suas contribuições a um repositório remoto— disponibilizando-os para outros colabora- dores. Enquanto sequências de revisões e trabalho paralelo aumentam a produtividade do software, por outro lado, alterações simultâneas podem causar conflitos de mescla- gem. Além disso, quando duas entidades de software (por exemplo, classes, métodos, campos) são mudados frequentemente de forma simultânea, eles se tornam dependentes de co-alteração um do outro— um tipo de dependência que geralmente está oculta dos de- senvolvedores. Alguns estudos investigam como reduzir as dependências de co-alterações e de conflitos sintáticos em operações de mesclagem, mas existem algumas questões em aberto sobre esse tipo específico de dependência e se conflitos de mesclagem introduzem bugs. Neste trabalho, esclarecemos essas questões e apresentamos os resultados de uma avaliação empírica que explora os dados históricos de 34 projetos Apache, para verificar se as alterações que introduziram erros (BIC) se correlacionam com cenários de mesclagem conflitantes e commits que levam a dependências de co-alterações. Nosso estudo apresenta que o SZZ - um algoritmo para encontrar os commits que introduziram erros - rotulou 3,62 % dos cenários de mesclagem em conflito como um commit de introdução de erros e 18,77 % dos commits levam a dependências de co-alterações . Nossos resultados trazem várias implicações para pesquisadores e profissionais. Entre eles, evidenciamos que os desenvolvedores não devem ter medo de resolver conflitos, já que apenas uma pequena porcentagem de os cenários de mesclagem em conflito foi suspeita de ter introduzido bugs.CAPESAlmost all developers build software using a collaborative development approach. In this scenario, after concluding a task, developers commit their contributions to a remote repository—making them available to other contributors. While sequences of revisions and parallel working increase software productivity, on the other hand, concurrent changes might cause merge conflicts. Moreover, when two software entities (e.g. classes, methods, fields) are frequently changed together, they become co-change dependent on each other— a kind of dependency that is often hidden from the developers. Some studies investigate how to reduce co-change dependencies and syntactic conflicts in merge operations, but there are some open questions about whether this particular kind of dependency and merge conflicts introduce bugs. In this work, we shed light upon these questions and present the results of an empirical assessment that mine the historical data of 39 Apache projects, to verify if bug-introducing changes (BIC) correlate with conflicted merge sce- narios and commits that lead to co-change dependencies. Our study presents that SZZ — an algorithm to find bug introducing commits — labeled 3.62% of conflicted merge scenarios as being a bug-introducing commit and 18.77% of the commits that lead to co-change dependencies. Our results bring several implications for both researchers and practitioners. Among them, we give evidence that developers should not be afraid of solv- ing conflicts since just a small percentage of the conflicted merge scenarios are suspicious of having introduced bugs