| [egit-dev] On the usability of software history |
| Hello, I am a PhD student at Oregon State University and I just completed a study on why and how developers need to examine software history. It is my hope that the study will help tool builders design better tools with specific support for the use cases that developers have for retrieving information from version control history. The paper is located here. It covers the motivations participants had for examining software history (think of them like use cases for history), the most common strategies they used history to find what they want, the challenges they encounter while doing so and unfulfilled needs about VCS. At the end of the paper we suggest a new way tool builders need to look at history in order to build VCS tools that address actual specific use cases that developers have. We then also do a quick literature review to document tools that already address some issues. Also, if anybody has any feedback on the paper, I would appreciate if they send it to me. This would be helpful because I will have a chance to include it in the final version of the paper. I hope that my study will be of some use to you. Thank you, Mihai Codoban School of EECS, Oregon State University |