Collaborative Development Environment in Peer-to-Peer Networks

Abstract

Collaboration is a huge part of modern software development. Yet most tools used in software development are aimed for single user instances. To support collaborative software practices, researchers and practitioners have presented several tools. The existing tools support collaboration either through distributed version control systems or through client/server-based concurrent text editors. Distributed version control systems do not support real-time collaboration; while the server-based concurrent editors do not support offline work. In this paper, we propose the design of a replica-based collaborative development environment (CDE) within a peer to peer network of users. The CDE supports both real-time collaborative editing and offline work. In addition, the CDE is scalable, resilient to the dynamic joining/leaving of collaborating users, and can be augmented into existing development environments as a plugin. We evaluate the usability of the CDE with respect to operation propagation time, and the correctness with respect to the causality, convergence and intention preservation (CCI) criteria.