Transition from centralized to distributed vcs: A microsoft case study on reasons, barriers, and outcomes

In recent years, software development has started to transition from centralized version control systems (CVCSs) to decentralized version control systems (DVCSs). Although CVCSs and DVCSs have been studied extensively, there has been little research on the transition across these systems.This paper investigates the transition process, from the developer’s view, in a large company. The paper captures the transition reasons, barriers, and outcomes through 10 developer interviews, and investigates these findings through a survey, participated by 70 developers. The paper identifies that the majority of the developers need to work incrementally and offline, and manage multiple contexts efficiently. DVCSs fulfill these developer needs; however the transition comes with a cost depending on the previous development workflow. The paper discusses the transition reasons, barriers and outcomes, and provides recommendations for teams planning such a transition. The paper shows that lightweight branches, and local and incremental commits were the main reasons for developers wanting to move to a DVCS. Further, the paper identifies the main problems with the transition process as: steep DVCS learning curve; incomplete DVCS integration with the rest of the development workflow; and DVCS scaling issues.