20 lines
1.9 KiB
TeX
20 lines
1.9 KiB
TeX
\begin{abstract}
|
|
OSS projects are being developed by globally distributed contributors, who often collaborate through the pull-based model today.
|
|
While this model lowers the barrier to entry for OSS developers by synthesizing, automating and optimizing the contribution process,
|
|
coordination among an increasing number of contributors remains as a challenge
|
|
due to the asynchronous and self-organized nature of distributed development.
|
|
In particular, duplicate contributions, where multiple different contributors unintentionally submit duplicate pull requests to achieve the same goal,
|
|
are an elusive problem that may waste effort in automated testing, code review and software maintenance.
|
|
While the issue of duplicate pull requests has been highlighted, to what extent duplicate pull requests affect the development in OSS communities has not been well investigated.
|
|
In this paper, we conduct a mixed-approach study to bridge this gap.
|
|
Based on a comprehensive dataset constructed from 26 popular GitHub projects, we obtain the following findings:
|
|
(a)~Duplicate pull requests result in redundant human and computing resources, exerting a significant impact on the contribution and evaluation process.
|
|
(b)~Contributors' inappropriate working patterns and unawareness of other contributors and their activities might result in duplicate pull requests.
|
|
(c)~Compared to non-duplicate pull requests, duplicate pull requests have significantly different features,
|
|
\textit{i.e.}, being submitted by inexperienced contributors, being fixing bugs,
|
|
introducing more code modifications, touching cold files, solving tracked issues, and changing source code files.
|
|
(d)~Integrators choosing between duplicate pull requests prefer to accept those with accurate and high-quality implementation, broad coverage, test code, deep discussion, active response, and early submission time.
|
|
Finally, actionable suggestions and implications are proposed for OSS practitioners.
|
|
|
|
\end{abstract}
|