A Multiple Locking Group Scheme for Flexible Semantic Conflict Prevention in Real-Time Collaborative Programming
Wenhua Xu, Yifan Ma, Hongguang Zhou, Mingjie Wang, Bowen Du, Hongfei Fan · 2022 IEEE 25th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD) · 2022
Real-time collaborative programming has attracted increasing attention and interest in recent years. To resolve the semantic conflict problem in real-time collaborative programming, a Dependency-based Automatic Locking (DAL) scheme was proposed in prior work. The DAL scheme prevents other collaborators from editing semantically related regions by automatically detecting depended regions and locking them. However, the DAL scheme lacks flexibility and is not well suited to the needs of programmers in a real-world development scenario. When the programmer switches to a new region, all previous locks are automatically released. For this reason, we propose the Multiple Locking Group (MLG) scheme, where each programmer can hold multiple locking groups and switch freely between multiple working regions. Accordingly, three release modes for releasing locking groups are proposed. Each programmer can customize the release modes in a fine-grained manner. In supporting the scheme, we have devised techniques and solutions, implemented a prototype system and conducted a preliminary user evaluation to validate the feasibility, effectiveness and usability of the MLG scheme.