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ICSE 2021
Mon 17 May - Sat 5 June 2021

Online collaboration platforms such as GitHub have provided software developers with the ability to easily reuse and share code between repositories. With clone-and-own and forking becoming prevalent, maintaining these shared files is important, especially for keeping the most up-to-date version of reused code. Different to related work, we propose the concept of meta-maintenance—i.e., tracking how the same files evolve in different repositories with the aim to provide useful maintenance opportunities to those files. We conduct an exploratory study by analyzing repositories from seven different programming languages to explore the potential of meta-maintenance. Our results indicate that a majority of active repositories on GitHub contains at least one file which is also present in another repository, and that a significant minority of these files are maintained differently in the different repositories which contain them. We manually analyzed a representative sample of shared files and their variants to understand which changes might be useful for meta-maintenance. Our findings support the potential of meta-maintenance and open up avenues for future work to capitalize on this potential.

Wed 26 May

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

14:30 - 15:25
2.3.5. Handling Ecosystems of Forked ProjectsTechnical Track / NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results at Blended Sessions Room 5 +12h
Chair(s): Claudia Ayala Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
14:30
20m
Paper
Same File, Different Changes: The Potential of Meta-Maintenance on GitHubArtifact ReusableTechnical TrackArtifact Available
Technical Track
Hideaki Hata Shinshu University, Raula Gaikovina Kula NAIST, Takashi Ishio Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Christoph Treude University of Adelaide
DOI Pre-print Media Attached
14:50
15m
Paper
Semi-Automated Test-Case Propagation in Fork EcosystemsNIER
NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results
Mukelabai Mukelabai Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Thorsten Berger Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Paulo Borba Federal University of Pernambuco
Pre-print Media Attached
15:05
20m
Paper
Can Program Synthesis be Used to Learn Merge Conflict Resolutions? An Empirical AnalysisTechnical Track
Technical Track
Rangeet Pan Dept. of Computer Science, Iowa State University, Vu Le Microsoft, Nachiappan Nagappan Microsoft Research, Sumit Gulwani Microsoft, Shuvendu K. Lahiri Microsoft, Mike Kaufman Microsoft
Pre-print Media Attached

Thu 27 May

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

02:30 - 03:25
2.3.5. Handling Ecosystems of Forked ProjectsTechnical Track / NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results at Blended Sessions Room 5
02:30
20m
Paper
Same File, Different Changes: The Potential of Meta-Maintenance on GitHubArtifact ReusableTechnical TrackArtifact Available
Technical Track
Hideaki Hata Shinshu University, Raula Gaikovina Kula NAIST, Takashi Ishio Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Christoph Treude University of Adelaide
DOI Pre-print Media Attached
02:50
15m
Paper
Semi-Automated Test-Case Propagation in Fork EcosystemsNIER
NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results
Mukelabai Mukelabai Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Thorsten Berger Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Paulo Borba Federal University of Pernambuco
Pre-print Media Attached
03:05
20m
Paper
Can Program Synthesis be Used to Learn Merge Conflict Resolutions? An Empirical AnalysisTechnical Track
Technical Track
Rangeet Pan Dept. of Computer Science, Iowa State University, Vu Le Microsoft, Nachiappan Nagappan Microsoft Research, Sumit Gulwani Microsoft, Shuvendu K. Lahiri Microsoft, Mike Kaufman Microsoft
Pre-print Media Attached