Towards an automation of the traceability of bugs from development logs: A study based on open source software

Context: Information and tracking of defects can be severely incomplete in almost every Open Source project, resulting in a reduced traceability of defects into the development logs (i.e., version control commit logs). In particular, defect data often appears not in sync when considering what developers logged as their actions. Synchronizing or completing the missing data of the bug repositories, with the logs detailing the actions of developers, would benefit various branches of empirical software engineering research: prediction of software faults, software reliability, traceability, software quality, effort and cost estimation, bug prediction and bug fixing. Objective: To design a framework that automates the process of synchronizing and filling the gaps of the development logs and bug issue data for open source software projects. Method: We instantiate the framework with a sample of OSS projects from GitHub, and by parsing, linking and filling the gaps found in their bug issue data, and development logs. UML diagrams show the relevant modules that will be used to merge, link and connect the bug issue data with the development data. Results: Analysing a sample of over 300 OSS projects we observed that around 1/2 of bug-related data is present in either development logs or issue tracker logs: the rest of the data is missing from one or the other source. We designed an automated approach that fills the gaps of either source by making use of the available data, and we successfully mapped all the missing data of the analysed projects, when using one heuristics of annotating bugs. Other heuristics need to be investigated and implemented. Conclusion: In this paper a framework to synchronise the development logs and bug data used in empirical software engineering was designed to automatically fill the missing parts of development logs and bugs of issue data

Towards an Automation of the Traceability of Bugs from Development Logs

Context: Information and tracking of defects can be severely incomplete in almost every Open Source project, resulting in a reduced traceability of defects into the development logs (i.e., version control commit logs). In particular, defect data often appears not in sync when considering what developers logged as their actions. Synchronizing or completing the missing data of the bug repositories, with the logs detailing the actions of developers, would benefit various branches of empirical software engineering research: prediction of software faults, software reliability, traceability, software quality, effort and cost estimation, bug prediction and bug fixing. Objective: To design a framework that automates the process of synchronizing and filling the gaps of the development logs and bug issue data for open source software projects. Method: We instantiate the framework with a sample of OSS projects from GitHub, and by parsing, linking and filling the gaps found in their bug issue data, and development logs. UML diagrams show the relevant modules that will be used to merge, link and connect the bug issue data with the development data. Results: Analysing a sample of over 300 OSS projects we observed that around 1/2 of bug-related data is present in either development logs or issue tracker logs: the rest of the data is missing from one or the other source. We designed an automated approach that fills the gaps of either source by making use of the available data, and we successfully mapped all the missing data of the analysed projects, when using one heuristics of annotating bugs. Other heuristics need to be investigated and implemented. Conclusion: In this paper a framework to synchronise the development logs and bug data used in empirical software engineering was designed to automatically fill the missing parts of development logs and bugs of issue data

Assessing architectural evolution: A case study

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerThis paper proposes to use a historical perspective on generic laws, principles, and guidelines, like Lehman’s software evolution laws and Martin’s design principles, in order to achieve a multi-faceted process and structural assessment of a system’s architectural evolution. We present a simple structural model with associated historical metrics and visualizations that could form part of an architect’s dashboard. We perform such an assessment for the Eclipse SDK, as a case study of a large, complex, and long-lived system for which sustained effective architectural evolution is paramount. The twofold aim of checking generic principles on a well-know system is, on the one hand, to see whether there are certain lessons that could be learned for best practice of architectural evolution, and on the other hand to get more insights about the applicability of such principles. We find that while the Eclipse SDK does follow several of the laws and principles, there are some deviations, and we discuss areas of architectural improvement and limitations of the assessment approach

Parametrizations of Inclusive Cross Sections for Pion Production in Proton-Proton Collisions

Accurate knowledge of cross sections for pion production in proton-proton collisions finds wide application in particle physics, astrophysics, cosmic ray physics and space radiation problems, especially in situations where an incident proton is transported through some medium, and one requires knowledge of the output particle spectrum given the input spectrum. In such cases accurate parametrizations of the cross sections are desired. In this paper we review much of the experimental data and compare to a wide variety of different cross section parametrizations. In so doing, we provide parametrizations of neutral and charged pion cross sections which provide a very accurate description of the experimental data. Lorentz invariant differential cross sections, spectral distributions and total cross section parametrizations are presented.Comment: 32 pages with 15 figures. Published in Physical Review D62, 094030. File includes 6 tex files. The main file is paper.tex which has include statements refering to the rest. figures are in graphs.di

Some Findings Concerning Requirements in Agile Methodologies

gile methods have appeared as an attractive alternative to conventional methodologies. These methods try to reduce the time to market and, indirectly, the cost of the product through flexible development and deep customer involvement. The processes related to requirements have been extensively studied in literature, in most cases in the frame of conventional methods. However, conclusions of conventional methodologies could not be necessarily valid for Agile; in some issues, conventional and Agile processes are radically different. As recent surveys report, inadequate project requirements is one of the most conflictive issues in agile approaches and better understanding about this is needed. This paper describes some findings concerning requirements activities in a project developed under an agile methodology. The project intended to evolve an existing product and, therefore, some background information was available. The major difficulties encountered were related to non-functional needs and management of requirements dependencies

Leading particle effect, inelasticity and the connection between average multiplicities in {\bf e+e−e^+e^-} and {\bf pppp} processes

The Regge-Mueller formalism is used to describe the inclusive spectrum of the proton in $p p$ collisions. From such a description the energy dependences of both average inelasticity and leading proton multiplicity are calculated. These quantities are then used to establish the connection between the average charged particle multiplicities measured in {\bf $e^+e^-$} and {\bf $pp/{\bar p}p$} processes. The description obtained for the leading proton cross section implies that Feynman scaling is strongly violated only at the extreme values of $x_F$, that is at the central region ($x_F \approx 0$) and at the diffraction region ($x_F \approx 1$), while it is approximately observed in the intermediate region of the spectrum.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, to be published in Physical Review

Double hadron leptoproduction in the nuclear medium

First measurement of double-hadron production in deep-inelastic scattering has been measured with the HERMES spectrometer at HERA using a 27.6 GeV positron beam with deuterium, nitrogen, krypton and xenon targets. The influence of the nuclear medium on the ratio of double-hadron to single-hadron yields has been investigated. Nuclear effects are clearly observed but with substantially smaller magnitude and reduced $A$-dependence compared to previously measured single-hadron multiplicity ratios. The data are in fair agreement with models based on partonic or pre-hadronic energy loss, while they seem to rule out a pure absorptive treatment of the final state interactions. Thus, the double-hadron ratio provides an additional tool for studying modifications of hadronization in nuclear matter

Subleading-twist effects in single-spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering on a longitudinally polarized hydrogen target

Single-spin asymmetries in the semi-inclusive production of charged pions in deep-inelastic scattering from transversely and longitudinally polarized proton targets are combined to evaluate the subleading-twist contribution to the longitudinal case. This contribution is significantly positive for (\pi^+) mesons and dominates the asymmetries on a longitudinally polarized target previously measured by \hermes. The subleading-twist contribution for (\pi^-) mesons is found to be small