DeltaImpactFinder: Assessing Semantic Merge Conflicts with Dependency Analysis
Abstract
In software development, version control systems (VCS) provide branching and merging support tools. Such tools are popular among developers to concurrently change a code-base in separate lines and reconcile their changes automatically afterwards. However, two changes that are correct independently can introduce bugs when merged together. We call semantic merge conflicts this kind of bugs. Change impact analysis (CIA) aims at estimating the effects of a change in a codebase. In this paper, we propose to detect semantic merge conflicts using CIA. On a merge, DELTAIMPACTFINDER analyzes and compares the impact of a change in its origin and destination branches. We call the difference between these two impacts the delta-impact. If the delta-impact is empty, then there is no indicator of a semantic merge conflict and the merge can continue automatically. Otherwise, the delta-impact contains what are the sources of possible conflicts.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1509.04207,
title = {DeltaImpactFinder: Assessing Semantic Merge Conflicts with Dependency Analysis},
author = {Martín Dias and Guillermo Polito and Damien Cassou and Stéphane Ducasse},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.04207},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies 2015, Jul 2015, Brescia, Italy