Discovering Loners and Phantoms in Commit and Issue Data

Abstract

The interlinking of commit and issue data has become a de-facto standard in software development. Modern issue tracking systems, such as JIRA, automatically interlink commits and issues by the extraction of identifiers (e.g., issue key) from commit messages. However, the conventions for the use of interlinking methodologies vary between software projects. For example, some projects enforce the use of identifiers for every commit while others have less restrictive conventions. In this work, we introduce a model called PaLiMod to enable the analysis of interlinking characteristics in commit and issue data. We surveyed 15 Apache projects to investigate differences and commonalities between linked and non-linked commits and issues. Based on the gathered information, we created a set of heuristics to interlink the residual of non-linked commits and issues. We present the characteristics of Loners and Phantoms in commit and issue data. The results of our evaluation indicate that the proposed PaLiMod model and heuristics enable an automatic interlinking and can indeed reduce the residual of non-linked commits and issues in software projects. Abstract-The interlinking of commit and issue data has become a de-facto standard in software development. Modern issue tracking systems, such as JIRA, automatically interlink commits and issues by the extraction of identifiers (e.g., issue key) from commit messages. However, the conventions for the use of interlinking methodologies vary between software projects. For example, some projects enforce the use of identifiers for every commit while others have less restrictive conventions. In this work, we introduce a model called PaLiMod to enable the analysis of interlinking characteristics in commit and issue data. We surveyed 15 Apache projects to investigate differences and commonalities between linked and non-linked commits and issues. Based on the gathered information, we created a set of heuristics to interlink the residual of non-linked commits and issues. We present the characteristics of Loners and Phantoms in commit and issue data. The results of our evaluation indicate that the proposed PaLiMod model and heuristics enable an automatic interlinking and can indeed reduce the residual of non-linked commits and issues in software projects.

An empirical study of issue-link algorithms: which issue-link algorithms should we use?

“…Locating defect-fixing and defect-inducing commits by using the issue ids in commit/log messages is a common practice in software engineering ( Čubranić and Murphy 2003;Fischer et al 2003bFischer et al , 2003aŚliwerski et al 2005;Bernstein 2009a, 2010;Bird et al 2010;Sureka et al 2011;Wu et al 2011;Nguyen et al 2012;Bissyandé et al 2013;Le et al 2015;Schermann et al 2015;Sun et al 2016Sun et al , 2017aXie et al 2019;Tu and Menzies 2020). For example, Fischer et al (Fischer et al 2003a) applied regular expressions to log messages to retrieve issue ids.…”

“…To address the second challenge, many studies have attempted to improve the accuracy of detecting defect-fixing commits (Fischer et al 2003a;Śliwerski et al 2005;Bernstein 2009a, 2010;Bird et al 2010;Sureka et al 2011;Wu et al 2011;Nguyen et al 2012;Bissyandé et al 2013;Le et al 2015;Schermann et al 2015;Sun et al 2016Sun et al , 2017aXie et al 2019;Tu and Menzies 2020). More specifically, ILAs (issue-link algorithms) have been proposed to link issue reports to commits.…”

“…To improve the accuracy of detecting defect-fixing commits, many prior studies have proposed various issue-link algorithms (ILAs) that use several criteria to detect defect-fixing commits (Fischer et al 2003a;Śliwerski et al 2005;Bernstein 2009a, 2010;Bird et al 2010;Sureka et al 2011;Wu et al 2011;Nguyen et al 2012;Bissyandé et al 2013;Le et al 2015;Schermann et al 2015;Sun et al 2016Sun et al , 2017aXie et al 2019;Tu and Menzies 2020). For example, Wu et al (2011) proposed an ILA called ReLink.…”

Traceability in the wild

“…Our goal is therefore to create trace links as the commits are made so that developers can accept or reject them in order to create a set of trusted links. In [57], the authors proposed two heuristics, Loners and Phantoms, to infer trace links between commits and issues. We incorporate their concepts as one attribute in our classifier.…”

“…However, often only one commit in this series is explicitly linked to I . In [57] the other commits in this series are termed phantoms. All commits in the series may share commonalities.…”