research-article

Studying the fix-time for bugs in large open source projects

Authors:

Ahmed E. HassanAuthors Info & Claims

Promise '11: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering

Article No.: 11, Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/2020390.2020401

Published: 20 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Background: Bug fixing lies at the core of most software maintenance efforts. Most prior studies examine the effort needed to fix a bug (fix-effort). However, the effort needed to fix a bug may not correlate with the calendar time needed to fix it (fix-time). For example, the fix-time for bugs with low fix-effort may be long if they are considered to be of low priority.

Aims: We study the fix-time for bugs in large open source projects.

Method: We study the fix-time along three dimensions: (1) the location of the bug (e.g., which component), (2) the reporter of the bug, and (3) the description of the bug. Using these three dimensions and their associated attributes, we examine the fix-time for bugs in two large open source projects: Eclipse and Mozilla, using a random forest classifier.

Results: We show that we can correctly classify ~65% of the time the fix-time for bugs in these projects. We perform a sensitivity analysis to identify the most important attributes in each dimension. We find that the time of the filing of a bug and its location are the most important attributes in the Mozilla project for determining the fix-time of a bug. On the other hand, the fix-time in the Eclipse project is highly dependant on the severity of the bug. Surprisingly, the priority of the bug is not an important attribute when determining the fix-time for a bug in both projects.

Conclusion: Attributes affecting the fix-time vary between projects and vary over time within the same project.

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Cited By

Acharya JGinde GShang WLamothe MWan Z(2024)Graph Neural Network vs. Large Language Model: A Comparative Analysis for Bug Report Priority and Severity PredictionProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Predictive Models and Data Analytics in Software Engineering10.1145/3663533.3664042(2-11)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663533.3664042
Dey TLoungani JIvers JShang WLamothe MWan Z(2024)Smarter Project Selection for Software Engineering ResearchProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Predictive Models and Data Analytics in Software Engineering10.1145/3663533.3664037(12-21)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663533.3664037
Xie DWang JPham HTan LGuo YAziz AMeijer E(2024)CEDAR: Continuous Testing of Deep Learning Libraries2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER60148.2024.00044(371-382)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER60148.2024.00044
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Index Terms

Studying the fix-time for bugs in large open source projects
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems

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cover image ACM Other conferences

Promise '11: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering

September 2011

145 pages

ISBN:9781450307093

DOI:10.1145/2020390

General Chair:
Tim Menzies
WVU

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 20 September 2011

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Promise '11

Promise '11: 7th International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering

September 20 - 21, 2011

Alberta, Banff, Canada

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Promise '11 Paper Acceptance Rate 15 of 35 submissions, 43%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 98 of 213 submissions, 46%

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Cited By

Acharya JGinde GShang WLamothe MWan Z(2024)Graph Neural Network vs. Large Language Model: A Comparative Analysis for Bug Report Priority and Severity PredictionProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Predictive Models and Data Analytics in Software Engineering10.1145/3663533.3664042(2-11)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663533.3664042
Dey TLoungani JIvers JShang WLamothe MWan Z(2024)Smarter Project Selection for Software Engineering ResearchProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Predictive Models and Data Analytics in Software Engineering10.1145/3663533.3664037(12-21)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663533.3664037
Xie DWang JPham HTan LGuo YAziz AMeijer E(2024)CEDAR: Continuous Testing of Deep Learning Libraries2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER60148.2024.00044(371-382)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER60148.2024.00044
Chen BZou WCai BMeng QLiu WLi PChen L(2024)An empirical study on the potential of word embedding techniques in bug report management tasksEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-024-10510-329:5Online publication date: 25-Jul-2024
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Miloudi CCheikhi LIdri AAbran A(2024)On the value of instance selection for bug resolution prediction performanceJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.2710Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
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Eiroa-Lledo EAli RPinto GAnderson JLinstead E(2023)Large-Scale Identification and Analysis of Factors Impacting Simple Bug Resolution Times in Open Source Software RepositoriesApplied Sciences10.3390/app1305315013:5(3150)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2023
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Rombaut BCogo FAdams BHassan A(2023)There’s no Such Thing as a Free Lunch: Lessons Learned from Exploring the Overhead Introduced by the Greenkeeper Dependency Bot in NpmACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/352258732:1(1-40)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2023
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Li CZhao YYang YZhou YNie LDing Z(2023)Investigating the Impact of Bug Dependencies on Bug-Fixing Time Prediction2023 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1109/ESEM56168.2023.10304804(1-12)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2023
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Krasniqi RDo H(2023)A multi-model framework for semantically enhancing detection of quality-related bug report descriptionsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10280-w28:2Online publication date: 11-Feb-2023
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