Purposes, concepts, misfits, and a redesign of git
Name
oopsla-preprint.pdf
Size
1.19 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
5733d1c765f68f778f2df3bf7d2c9f8e
Author(s)
Perez De Rosso, Santiago Nicolas
Jackson, Daniel
Date Issued
November 2016
Journal
Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications - OOPSLA 2016
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Citation
De Rosso, Santiago Perez, and Daniel Jackson. “Purposes, Concepts, Misfits, and a Redesign of Git.” ACM Press, 2016. 292–310.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Git is a widely used version control system that is powerful but complicated. Its complexity may not be an inevitable consequence of its power but rather evidence of flaws in its design. To explore this hypothesis, we analyzed the design of Git using a theory that identifies concepts, purposes, and misfits. Some well-known difficulties with Git are described, and explained as misfits in which underlying concepts fail to meet their intended purpose. Based on this analysis, we designed a reworking of Git (called Gitless) that attempts to
remedy these flaws. To correlate misfits with issues reported by users, we
conducted a study of Stack Overflow questions. And to determine whether users experienced fewer complications using Gitless in place of Git, we conducted a small user study. Results suggest our approach can be profitable in identifying, analyzing, and fixing design problems.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/2983990.2984018
