research-article

To branch or not to branch?

Authors:

Hans van VlietAuthors Info & Claims

ICSSP '11: Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Software and Systems Process

Pages 81 - 90

https://doi.org/10.1145/1987875.1987890

Published: 21 May 2011 Publication History

Abstract

The study of Software Configuration Management (SCM) has so far focused on the use of tools, SCM models, strategies, patterns or best practices. There are few industry studies on how an organization actually practices file branching and merging. In this empirical study at Océ, we have observed that some developers create branches freely without regards to their consequences on merging. This contradicts recommended best practices and SCM processes. So we investigate if there are hidden costs in propagating or merging changes at Océ. The investigation led us to understand that branching and merging can be done freely under certain circumstances to provide development concurrency. However, some files cannot be branched freely and it may be better to use recommended practices to edit them. Some roles were also noted to be more affected by branching of files.

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Cited By

Cheng KCuvin POlechowski AZhou S(2023)User Perspectives on Branching in Computer-Aided DesignProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36102207:CSCW2(1-30)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610220
Muylaert WHärtel JDe Roover C(2023)Symbolic Execution to Detect Semantic Merge Conflicts2023 IEEE 23rd International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)10.1109/SCAM59687.2023.00028(186-197)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM59687.2023.00028
Costa CMenezes JTrindade BSantos R(2021)Factors that Affect Merge Conflicts: A Software Developers’ PerspectiveProceedings of the XXXV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3474624.3474641(233-242)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3474624.3474641
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

To branch or not to branch?
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Software configuration management and version control systems

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ICSSP '11: Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Software and Systems Process

May 2011

256 pages

ISBN:9781450307307

DOI:10.1145/1987875

General Chair:
David Raffo
Portland State University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Dietmar Pfahl
Lund University, Sweden
,
Li Zhang
BeiHang University, China

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 May 2011

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ICSSP '11

ICSSP '11: International Conference on Software and Systems Process

May 21 - 22, 2011

HI, Waikiki, Honolulu, USA

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Cited By

Cheng KCuvin POlechowski AZhou S(2023)User Perspectives on Branching in Computer-Aided DesignProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36102207:CSCW2(1-30)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610220
Muylaert WHärtel JDe Roover C(2023)Symbolic Execution to Detect Semantic Merge Conflicts2023 IEEE 23rd International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)10.1109/SCAM59687.2023.00028(186-197)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM59687.2023.00028
Costa CMenezes JTrindade BSantos R(2021)Factors that Affect Merge Conflicts: A Software Developers’ PerspectiveProceedings of the XXXV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3474624.3474641(233-242)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3474624.3474641
Zou WZhang WXia XHolmes RChen Z(2019)Branch Use in Practice: A Large-Scale Empirical Study of 2,923 Projects on GitHub2019 IEEE 19th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS)10.1109/QRS.2019.00047(306-317)Online publication date: Jul-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/QRS.2019.00047
Rayana RKillian STrangez NCalmettes AAdams BBellomo SBird CKhomh FMoir KO’Duinn JMcIntosh SDebić B(2016)GitWaterFlow: a successful branching model and tooling, for achieving continuous delivery with multiple version branchesProceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Release Engineering10.1145/2993274.2993277(17-20)Online publication date: 18-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2993274.2993277
Michaud HGuarnera DCollard MMaletic J(2016)Recovering Commit Branch of Origin from GitHub Repositories2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2016.39(290-300)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2016.39
Bird CZimmermann TTracz WRobillard MBultan T(2012)Assessing the value of branches with what-if analysisProceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT 20th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/2393596.2393648(1-11)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2393596.2393648
Shihab EBird CZimmermann TRuneson PHöst MMendes EAndrews AHarrison R(2012)The effect of branching strategies on software qualityProceedings of the ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement10.1145/2372251.2372305(301-310)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2372251.2372305

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