When developers collaborate on a software project, the style of the code should be consistent across the codebase. However, as developers do not always concur on code style practices, achieving a consensus can be burdensome. Even when code style guidelines are defined for a project, developers often have difficulties adhering to them. Additionally, when working on several projects with diverse guidelines, following different styles can become a frustrating, error-prone, and time-consuming task for a developer. This work presents experiences from adopting two development workflow patterns that automatically ensure that code’s layout and formatting are consistent in a project’s repository while enabling each developer to utilize their preferences locally. From our experience, using any of these two patterns provides a successful way for collaborative software development that allows developers to relocate their time and concerns from code formatting to more valuable matters.

Tjaša Heričko

University of Maribor

Slovenia

Boštjan Šumak

University of Maribor

Slovenia