Automating the Resolutions for Software Merge Conflicts

Abstract

During collaborative software development, developers engage in parallel work on separate branches, which are eventually merged at regular intervals. However, conflicts can arise when edits from different branches overlap in the text. Resolving such conflicts involves three strategies: keeping the local version only (KL), keeping the remote version only (KR), or manually editing them (ME). Nonetheless, manually resolving merge conflicts can be a laborious and error-prone process. Thus, researchers proposed tools to aid in conflict resolution by combining edits from both branches as many as possible, although these tools often fail to consider the preferences of the developers involved adequately. Recent studies show that developers predominantly resolve textual conflicts via KL or KR. This suggests that existing tools do not fully consider the resolution preferences of developers but only focus on the technical feasibility of merging branch edits. Our research focuses on predicting developers’ resolutions automatically for software merge conflicts and suggesting resolution edits to developers. We designed and implemented three tools to automatically predict resolution strategies for merge conflicts and to automatically apply some of the strategies by producing merged versions. The tool evaluation shows promising results. Our research will help developers resolve conflicts effectively and efficiently; it will also shed light on future research for software merge and automatic conflict resolution.