A Conflict Detected Earlier is a Conflict Resolved Easier

Open Source development is highly distributed and parallel in nature. There are no definite boundaries, either for people or from where they work. This high level of parallel, distributed development leads to conflicting changes made concurrently by different developers. Because OSS developers lack the kinds of informal coordination opportunities that collocation offers, OSS developers must rely on mailing lists, discussion groups, and tools such as CM and bug tracking systems to try to manage their parallel efforts such that conflicts do not occur. Unfortunately, these coordination mechanisms are not adequate: it still regularly happens that parallel changes interfere, either via direct overlap or indirect, semantic conflicts. In this paper, we build upon our previous work in raising awareness as a mechanism to support better coordination among developers, and introduce a new integration of our Palantír tool with Eclipse as well as a new visualization of parallel work that we believe is especially useful in Open Source settings.