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ESEC/FSE 2021
Thu 19 - Sat 28 August 2021 Clowdr Platform

In collaborative software development, it is considered to be a best practice to submit code changes as a sequence of cohesive commits, each of which records the work result of a specific development \textit{activity}, such as adding a new feature, bug fixing, and refactoring.
However, rather than following this best practice, developers often submit a set of loosely-related changes serving for different development activities as a \emph{composite commit}, due to the tedious manual work and lack of effective tool support to decompose such a \emph{tangled changeset}.
Composite commits often obfuscate the change history of software artifacts and bring challenges to efficient collaboration among developers.
To encourage \textit{activity-oriented} commits, we propose \textit{SmartCommit}, a graph-partitioning-based interactive approach to tangled changeset decomposition that leverages not only the efficiency of algorithms but also the knowledge of developers.
To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we (1) deployed \textit{SmartCommit} in an international IT company, and analyzed usage data collected from a field study with 83 engineers over 9 months; and (2) conducted a controlled experiment on 3,000 synthetic composite commits from 10 diverse open-source projects. Results show that \textit{SmartCommit} achieves a median accuracy between 71–84% when decomposing composite commits without developer involvement, and significantly helps developers follow the best practice of submitting \textit{activity-oriented} commits with acceptable interaction effort and time cost in real collaborative software development.

Thu 26 Aug

Displayed time zone: Athens change

08:00 - 09:00
Human Aspects—Collaborative Software EngineeringResearch Papers +12h
Chair(s): Xin Tan Peking University, China, Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
08:00
10m
Paper
SmartCommit: A Graph-Based Interactive Assistant for Activity-Oriented CommitsDistinguished Paper AwardArtifacts AvailableArtifacts Reusable
Research Papers
Bo Shen Peking University, Wei Zhang Peking University, Christian Kästner Carnegie Mellon University, Haiyan Zhao Peking University, Zhao Wei Huawei Technologies, Guangtai Liang Huawei Technologies, Zhi Jin Peking University
DOI
08:10
10m
Paper
A First Look at Developers’ Live Chat on GitterArtifacts Available
Research Papers
Lin Shi Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiao Chen Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ye Yang Stevens Institute of Technology, Hanzhi Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ziyou Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nan Niu University of Cincinnati, Qing Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences
DOI
08:20
10m
Paper
Reel Life vs. Real Life: How Software Developers Share Their Daily Life through Vlogs
Research Papers
Souti Chattopadhyay Oregon State University, Thomas Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Denae Ford Microsoft Research
DOI
08:30
30m
Live Q&A
Q&A (Human Aspects—Collaborative Software Engineering)
Research Papers

20:00 - 21:00
Human Aspects—Collaborative Software EngineeringResearch Papers
Chair(s): Kelly Lyons University of Toronto
20:00
10m
Paper
SmartCommit: A Graph-Based Interactive Assistant for Activity-Oriented CommitsDistinguished Paper AwardArtifacts AvailableArtifacts Reusable
Research Papers
Bo Shen Peking University, Wei Zhang Peking University, Christian Kästner Carnegie Mellon University, Haiyan Zhao Peking University, Zhao Wei Huawei Technologies, Guangtai Liang Huawei Technologies, Zhi Jin Peking University
DOI
20:10
10m
Paper
A First Look at Developers’ Live Chat on GitterArtifacts Available
Research Papers
Lin Shi Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiao Chen Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ye Yang Stevens Institute of Technology, Hanzhi Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ziyou Jiang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nan Niu University of Cincinnati, Qing Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences
DOI
20:20
10m
Paper
Reel Life vs. Real Life: How Software Developers Share Their Daily Life through Vlogs
Research Papers
Souti Chattopadhyay Oregon State University, Thomas Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Denae Ford Microsoft Research
DOI
20:30
30m
Live Q&A
Q&A (Human Aspects—Collaborative Software Engineering)
Research Papers