Automerge: CRDTs meet version control

A talk at RainbowFS final workshop, Paris, France, 28 Mar 2022

• Slides

Abstract

Most collaboration software today assumes a Google-Docs-like model in which each collaborator’s edits are applied to the shared document or data structure as quickly as possible, often keystroke by keystroke. While this real-time collaboration model is great in some situations, it is not always appropriate. Sometimes, a user will want to work in isolation on a separate version of a document for a while, and share their updates with collaborators only when they are ready. Users might have multiple versions of a document side-by-side, which may or may not be merged later.

Software developers often use version control systems such as Git to enable such branching and merging workflows, to compare versions of a document, and to inspect the editing history. However, while Git works okay for plain text files, its support for more complex file formats (e.g. spreadsheets, graphics, CAD files) is poor: if two users modify the same file on different branches, resolving that merge conflict is left as a manual task for the user.

But we already have an excellent tool for automatically merging concurrent updates to a data structure: CRDTs! In this talk I will introduce our work-in-progress research on Automerge, which aims to bring together the world of Git-like version control and the world of CRDTs.