CSCoRE: Computer Science Collaborative Research Environment 2.0

Abstract

Collaboration is the cooperation of individuals in order to attain a common goal. In line with this concept, work ows may be employed to systematize cer- tain procedures necessary to conduct a research or a project. Using work ows relative to collaboration yields increased e ciency, better process control, exibil- ity and process optimization. Meanwhile to adapt with the distributed model of organization of most software development teams, distributed version control sys- tems (DVCSs) are rapidly gaining ground as the preferred architecture of projects over the traditional centralized systems. O ine operations, experimental branches and easy peer-to-peer collaboration are but some of the reasons why developers are making the switch. Although CSCoRE integrates e ective project management and availability of tools in one collaborative environment, it fairly lacks two substantial features relevant to research and development in Computer Science. First, it has no support for work ow management and second, it does not o er Git DVCS. With the Computer Science Collaborative Research Environment (CSCoRE) 2.0, the collaboratory gains a step up on its purpose of being a bene cial tool for collaboration speci cally for projects in the eld of Computer Science through the addition of the modules ProcessMaker and Git repository. ProcessMaker provides CSCoRE with an embedded work ow management system in which pertinent work ows tailored to the needs of a project can be utilized to streamline the ow of information among members of the team. The Git repository on the other hand, o ers users the ability to conveniently browse and obtain version controlled les of a project. Through this, the distributed nature of Git gives enough exibility to t well with the structure on how most software development teams collaborate and contribute.