WizardMerge -- Save Us From Merging Without Any Clues

TL;DR

WizardMerge is a tool that improves code merging in Git by providing suggestions and identifying conflict-unrelated code blocks, reducing conflict resolution time and aiding developers in resolving merge conflicts more effectively.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that leverages dependency analysis at text and LLVM-IR levels to assist developers in resolving merge conflicts.

Findings

Reduces conflict merging time by 23.85%.

Provides suggestions for over 70% of affected code blocks.

Identifies conflict-unrelated code blocks that need manual intervention.

Abstract

Modern software development necessitates efficient version-oriented collaboration among developers. While Git is the most popular version control system, it generates unsatisfactory version merging results due to textual-based workflow, leading to potentially unexpected results in the merged version of the project. Although numerous merging tools have been proposed for improving merge results, developers remain struggling to resolve the conflicts and fix incorrectly modified code without clues. We present WizardMerge, an auxiliary tool that leverages merging results from Git to retrieve code block dependency on text and LLVM-IR level and provide suggestions for developers to resolve errors introduced by textual merging. Through the evaluation, we subjected WizardMerge to testing on 227 conflicts within five large-scale projects. The outcomes demonstrate that WizardMerge diminishes conflict merging time costs, achieving a 23.85% reduction. Beyond addressing conflicts, WizardMerge provides merging suggestions for over 70% of the code blocks potentially affected by the conflicts. Notably, WizardMerge exhibits the capability to identify conflict-unrelated code blocks that require manual intervention yet are harmfully applied by Git during the merging.