research-article

Revisiting Assert Use in GitHub Projects

Authors:

Pavneet Singh Kochhar,

David LoAuthors Info & Claims

EASE '17: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

Pages 298 - 307

https://doi.org/10.1145/3084226.3084259

Published: 15 June 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Assertions are often used to test the assumptions that developers have about a program. An assertion contains a boolean expression which developers believe to be true at a particular program point. It throws an error if the expression is not satisfied, which helps developers to detect and correct bugs. Since assertions make developer assumptions explicit, assertions are also believed to improve under-standability of code. Recently, Casalnuovo et al. analyse C and C++ programs to understand the relationship between assertion usage and defect occurrence. Their results show that asserts have a small effect on reducing the density of bugs and developers often add asserts to methods they have prior knowledge of and larger ownership. In this study, we perform a partial replication of the above study on a large dataset of Java projects from GitHub (185 projects, 20 million LOC, 4 million commits, 0.2 million files and 1 million methods). We collect metrics such as number of asserts, number of defects, number of developers and number of lines changed to a method, and examine the relationship between asserts and defect occurrence. We also analyse relationship between developer experience and ownership and the number of asserts. Furthermore, we perform a study of what are different types of asserts added and why they are added by developers. We find that asserts have a small yet significant relationship with defect occurrence and developers who have added asserts to methods often have higher ownership of and experience with the methods than developers who did not add asserts.

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Cited By

Venigalla AChimalakonda S(2024)An exploratory study of software artifacts on GitHub from the lens of documentationInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107425(107425)Online publication date: Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107425
Härtel JLämmel R(2023)Operationalizing validity of empirical software engineering studiesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10370-328:6Online publication date: 13-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10370-3
Signoles JAhrendt WAncona DFrancalanza A(2021)The e-ACSL perspective on runtime assertion checkingProceedings of the 5th ACM International Workshop on Verification and mOnitoring at Runtime EXecution10.1145/3464974.3468451(8-12)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3464974.3468451
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Index Terms

Revisiting Assert Use in GitHub Projects
1. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning
      1. Assertions

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cover image ACM Other conferences

EASE '17: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

June 2017

405 pages

ISBN:9781450348041

DOI:10.1145/3084226

Conference Chair:
Emilia Mendes,
Program Chairs:
Steve Counsell,
Kai Petersen

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

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Published: 15 June 2017

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EASE'17

EASE'17: Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

June 15 - 16, 2017

Karlskrona, Sweden

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107425
Härtel JLämmel R(2023)Operationalizing validity of empirical software engineering studiesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10370-328:6Online publication date: 13-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10370-3
Signoles JAhrendt WAncona DFrancalanza A(2021)The e-ACSL perspective on runtime assertion checkingProceedings of the 5th ACM International Workshop on Verification and mOnitoring at Runtime EXecution10.1145/3464974.3468451(8-12)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3464974.3468451
Yu ZBai CSeinturier LMonperrus M(2021)Characterizing the Usage, Evolution and Impact of Java Annotations in PracticeIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.291051647:5(969-986)Online publication date: 1-May-2021
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