An Exploratory Study of the Pull-based Software Development Model
Georgios Gousios (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Martin Pinzger (University of Klagenfurt)
Arie van Deursen (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
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Abstract
The advent of distributed version control systems has led to the development of a new paradigm for distributed software development; instead of pushing changes to a central repository, developers pull them from other repositories and merge them locally. Various code hosting sites, notably Github, have tapped on the opportunity to facilitate pull-based development by offering workflow support tools, such as code reviewing systems and integrated issue trackers. In this work, we explore how pull-based software development works, first on the GHTorrent corpus and then on a carefully selected sample of 291 projects. We find that the pull request model offers fast turnaround, increased opportunities for community engagement and decreased time to incorporate contributions. We show that a relatively small number of factors affect both the decision to merge a pull request and the time to process it. We also examine the reasons for pull request rejection and find that technical ones are only a small minority.