{"id":167997,"date":"2015-02-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/towards-ast-based-collaborative-editing\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T22:34:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T05:34:32","slug":"towards-ast-based-collaborative-editing","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/towards-ast-based-collaborative-editing\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards AST-based Collaborative Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Handheld devices and cloud-connected applications are now commonplace. Even complex software development tasks are moving into the mobile arena, as exemplified by \u201con-thego\u201d code-editing with applications like Visual Studio Online. Further still, there is a trend towards <em>real-time<\/em> components in collaborative software development, with platforms like Google Docs and MS Office Online enabling limited forms of real-time collaborative document development.<\/p>\n<p>However, these platforms are unattractive for collaborative <em>software<\/em> development since they don\u2019t recognize and maintain code structure. Additionally, these systems are built atop ad-hoc algorithms or incredibly complex\/fragile techniques for ensuring eventual consistency of documents.<\/p>\n<p>We address these problems by providing a clean framework for realtime collaborative editing of source code within an online structured editor. We first develop a conflict-free three-way merge algorithm for program ASTs, which behaves intuitively to developers, and preserves syntactic correctness. We then show how this merge functionality can be used in conjunction with the Cloud Types eventual consistency model to enable seamless realtime collaboration.<\/p>\n<p>We have implemented our system in the TouchDevelop online programming environment. The UI now allows a user to select another user\u2019s code, and merge it into their current application (patch merge). We have also implemented basic realtime collaborative editing, allowing users to edit the same piece of code on multiple devices simultaneously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Handheld devices and cloud-connected applications are now commonplace. Even complex software development tasks are moving into the mobile arena, as exemplified by \u201con-thego\u201d code-editing with applications like Visual Studio Online. Further still, there is a trend towards real-time components in collaborative software development, with platforms like Google Docs and MS Office Online enabling limited forms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193718],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-167997","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"Microsoft Research","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2015-02-01","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"MSR-TR-2015-17","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"368222","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"paper-full","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/paper-full.pdf","id":368222,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sebastian Burckhardt","user_id":33544,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Sebastian Burckhardt"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Michal Moskal","user_id":37431,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Michal Moskal"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[144812],"msr_project":[170758],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"techreport","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":170758,"post_title":"TouchDevelop","post_name":"touchdevelop","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2011-07-20 17:36:45","post_modified":"2018-04-03 16:41:06","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/touchdevelop\/","post_excerpt":"Create apps everywhere on all your devices! For Windows Phone and the web. In the TouchDevelop programming environment you write scripts by tapping on the screen. You do not need a separate PC or keyboard. Scripts can perform various tasks similar to regular apps. Any TouchDevelop user can install, run, edit, publish scripts. You can share scripts with other people by publishing them to the TouchDevelop script bazaar, or by submitting them as an app&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170758"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/167997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/167997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":477762,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/167997\/revisions\/477762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-content-type?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-product-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-product-type?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-platform?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-download-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-download-source?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=167997"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=167997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}