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A mixed-methods analysis of micro-collaborative coding practices in OpenStack

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Abstract

Technical collaboration between multiple contributors is a natural phenomenon in distributed open source software development projects. Macro-collaboration, where each code commit is attributed to a single collaborator, has been extensively studied in the research literature. This is much less the case for so-called micro-collaboration practices, in which multiple authors contribute to the same commit. To support such practices, GitLab and GitHub started supporting social coding mechanisms such as the “Co-Authored-By:” trailers in commit messages, which, in turn, enable to empirically study such micro-collaboration. In order to understand the mechanisms, benefits and limitations of micro-collaboration, this article provides an exemplar case study of collaboration practices in the OpenStack ecosystem. Following a mixed-method research approach we provide qualitative evidence through a thematic and content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 16 OpenStack contributors. We contrast their perception with quantitative evidence gained by statistical analysis of the git commit histories (\(\sim \)1M commits) and Gerrit code review histories (\(\sim \)631K change sets and \(\sim \)2M patch sets) of 1,804 OpenStack project repositories over a 9-year period. Our findings provide novel empirical insights to practitioners to promote micro-collaborative coding practices, and to academics to conduct further research towards understanding and automating the micro-collaboration process.

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Notes

  1. https://www.gerritcodereview.com

  2. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=451880#12

  3. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=375536

  4. https://github.blog/2018-01-29-commit-together-with-co-authors/

  5. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/31640

  6. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages

  7. https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/01/github-multiple-author-commit/

  8. https://www.openstack.org/

  9. The replication package can be found on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5759968

  10. https://releases.openstack.org

  11. https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/projects/

  12. https://www.openstack.org/annual-reports/2020-openinfra-foundation-annual-report/

  13. https://launchpad.net/openstack

  14. https://storyboard.openstack.org

  15. https://docs.openstack.org/infra/system-config/zuul.html

  16. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages

  17. https://www.openstack.org/videos/summits/berlin-2018/community-contributor-recognition-and-how-to-get-startedhttps://www.openstack.org/videos/summits/berlin-2018/community-contributor-recognition-and-how-to-get-started

  18. https://superuser.openstack.org/articles/open-infrastructure-community-contributor-awards-denver-summit-edition/

  19. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/AUCRecognition

  20. https://superuser.openstack.org/articles/auc-community/

  21. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Community/AmbassadorProgram

  22. https://docs.openstack.org/contributors/code-and-documentation/introduction.html

  23. https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/user-inline-edit.html#editing-change

  24. https://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/drivers.html#feature-branches

  25. http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack/2011-August/022939.html

  26. https://opendev.org/opendev/puppet-ansible

  27. https://review.opendev.org/Documentation/rest-api.html

  28. There are identity pairs in \(\mathcal {P}\) that contain the same name-email pairs, but the username information only appears in one of them. If we account identities in \(\mathcal {P}\) as name-email pairs, the number of identities corresponds to 18,081.

  29. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/ThirdPartySystems

  30. https://docs.opendev.org/opendev/system-config/latest/systems.html

  31. https://docs.opendev.org/opendev/infra-manual/latest/developers.html

  32. https://factor-analyzer.readthedocs.io

  33. a https://docs.openstack.org/contributors/code-and-documentation/patch-best-practices.html

  34. https://www.analysisinn.com/post/kmo-and-bartlett-s-test-of-sphericity/

  35. https://opendev.org/openstack/neutron/commit/cd66232c2b

  36. https://review.opendev.org/c/x/group-based-policy/+/359883

  37. https://docs.huihoo.com/openstack/docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/cross-project.html

  38. According to Hess and Kromrey (2004) we interpret effect size as negligible (d < 0.147), small (0.147 ≤ d < 0.33), medium (0.33 ≤ d < 0.474) or large (d ≥ 0.474).

  39. https://www.statisticshowto.com/standardized-beta-coefficient/

  40. https://docs.openstack.org/contributors/code-and-documentation/patch-best-practices.html

  41. https://superuser.openstack.org/articles/auc-community/

  42. https://opendev.org/openstack/governance/src/branch/master/tools

  43. https://www.stackalytics.com/

  44. https://opendev.org/openstack/governance/src/branch/master/tools

  45. https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREE-5347

  46. https://releases.openstack.org

  47. https://openstack.nimeyo.com/108658/openstack-operators-migration-to-storyboard

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Funding

This research is partially supported by the F.R.S.-FNRS under Grant numbers T.0017.18, J.0151.20, and O.0157.18F-RG43 (Excellence of Science project SECO-Assist), as well as by the FRQ-F.R.S.-FNRS under Grant number 264544 (bilateral Québec-Wallonia project SECOHealth).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    Armstrong Foundjem & Bram Adams

  2. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands

    Eleni Constantinou

  3. Software Engineering Lab, University of Mons, Mons, Belgium

    Tom Mens

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  1. Armstrong Foundjem
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  2. Eleni Constantinou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Armstrong Foundjem.

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Ethics approval

The interviews performed during this study were subject to ethics certificate CER-1617-40, governed by the ethics board of Polytechnique Montreal.

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Communicated by: Alexandre Bergel

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Appendix : A: Questions for Guiding the OpenStack Interviews on Co-Authoring

Appendix : A: Questions for Guiding the OpenStack Interviews on Co-Authoring

1.1 A.1 Demographics

This first set of questions allow us to determine the profile and role of each interviewee within OpenStack.

  1. 1.

    How and why did you start to get involved in OpenStack?

  2. 2.

    What is your role in OpenStack? (And how did your role evolve over time?)

  3. 3.

    Which and how many OpenStack projects have you been involved in?

  4. 4.

    For how long have you been involved in OpenStack (and in these specific projects)?

1.2 A.2 Generic Questions

[These questions will be asked to each interviewee, regardless of his or her profile.]

  1. 1.

    Which mechanisms are you aware of (or have personal experience with) for making joint contributions to OpenStack projects with other persons? [If the question is too unclear, provide concrete examples to the interviewee, e.g., internally visible branch, externally visible branch, emails, slack, same commit, IRC ...]

  2. 2.

    Are you aware of (or familiar with) the possibility to co-author commits in OpenStack projects?

  3. 3.

    If yes:

    • Are co-authored commits common in the OpenStack projects you are involved in?

    • What value, if any, does commit co-authoring bring to the OpenStack projects your are involved in?

    • What are the drawbacks, if any, commit co-authoring brings to the ecosystem?

    • Did/does the practice of co-authored commits improve onboarding experience? Go to C1 or D1

  4. 4.

    If no:

    • For Foundation members, continue at question C2.

    • For all other interviewees: end of interview.

1.3 A.3 Questions for OpenStack Foundation Members

[These questions will only be asked to OpenStack Foundation members.]

  1. 1.

    If the interviewee is aware of the possibility to co-author commits:

    1. (a)

      In general, why do co-authored commits happen in OpenStack?

    2. (b)

      Does OpenStack actively encourage co-authored commits? Why (not)?

    3. (c)

      Are OpenStack ecosystem members satisfied by the way in which co-authored commits are supported process-wise or tool-wise? Do you see room for improvement? How?

  2. 2.

    How is OpenStack (or the specific projects you are or have been involved in) dealing with contributor onboarding, i.e., trying to attract and retain new contributors? Which techniques and/or processes are used to support this?

  3. 3.

    How is OpenStack trying to reduce contributor turnover, and more specifically how is it trying to avoid key contributors from abandoning?

  4. 4.

    Apart from the above issues, according to your personal experience, what are other social, technical or organizational health problems OpenStack is confronted with, including its community and its open source code base?

  5. 5.

    How are these problems being addressed? For those problems that are not addressed yet, how should they be addressed?

1.4 A.4 Questions for OpenStack Practitioners

[These questions will only be asked to software developers involved in OpenStack projects.]

  1. 1.

    Have you yourself been involved in co-authoring commits? For which projects (within and beyond OpenStack)?

  2. 2.

    If yes:

    1. (a)

      How frequently have you co-authored commits?

    2. (b)

      What were the reasons for, and goals of, co-authoring the commits you were involved in (as opposed to individually authoring them)?

    3. (c)

      Are you aware of other reasons/goals of co-authored commits?

    4. (d)

      How much experience did you have in OpenStack when you started co-authoring commits?

    5. (e)

      What were the characteristics of the persons you co-authored with (juniors, seniors, experts in specific topics, …)?

    6. (f)

      What process do you use for co-authoring commits with other contributors (communication, division of tasks, …)?

    7. (g)

      Who becomes the “principal author” (i.e., the author recorded in Git)?

    8. (h)

      Do you explicitly mark your co-authored commits using “co-authored trailers” in commit messages? Why (not)?

    9. (i)

      Are you satisfied by the way in which co-authored commits are supported by OpenStack, both process-wise or tool-wise? Do you see room for improvement? How?

  3. 3.

    If not at all:

    1. (a)

      Was it an explicit decision not to get involved in co-authoring?

    2. (b)

      If yes, why?

    3. (c)

      If not, do you see:

      1. (i)

        any value that commit co-authoring could bring to you?

      2. (ii)

        any drawbacks that commit co-authoring could bring to you?

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Foundjem, A., Constantinou, E., Mens, T. et al. A mixed-methods analysis of micro-collaborative coding practices in OpenStack. Empir Software Eng 27, 120 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-022-10167-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-022-10167-w

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