Exploration and Mining of Source Code Level Traceability Links on Stack Overflow

Abstract

Test-to-Code traceability is a valid problem of software engineering that arises naturally in the development of larger software systems. Traceability links can be uncovered through various techniques including information retrieval. The immense amount of data shared daily on Stack Overflow behaves similarly in many aspects. In the current work, we endeavor to discover test-to-code connections in the code shared and propose some applications of the findings. Semantic connections can also be explored between different software systems, information retrieval can be used both in cross-post and in cross-system scenarios. The information can also be used to discover new testing possibilities and ideas and has the potential to contribute to the development and testing of new systems as well.