Studying the Impact of Policy Changes on Bug Handling Performance

International audienceThe majority of the software development effort is spent on software maintenance. Bug handling constitutes one of the major software maintenance activities. Earlier studies have empirically investigated various aspects of bug handling, such as bug triaging, bug fixing, and bug process analysis. However, results from previous studies may not be applicable to contemporary agile software development practices. Moreover, these studies did not investigate how changes in the development policies and supporting tools impact the bug handling process. Therefore, our main goal is to investigate the impact of such changes on the bug handling process performance. To do so, we are conducting empirical studies on large and long-lived open source software projects. We report on our current research findings and outline the ongoing Ph.D. research project of the first author

On the impact of release policies on bug handling activity: A case study of Eclipse

International audienceLarge software projects follow a continuous development process with regular releases during which bugs are handled. In recent years, many software projects shifted to rapid releases that reduce time-to-market and claim a faster delivery of fixed issues, but also have a shorter period to address bugs. To better understand the impact of rapid releases on bug handling activity, we empirically analyse successive releases of the Eclipse Core projects, focusing on the bug handling rates and durations as well as the feature freeze period. We study the impact of Eclipse's transition from a yearly to quarterly release cycle. We confirm our findings through feedback received from five Eclipse Core maintainers. Among others, our results reveal that Eclipse's bug handling process is becoming more stable over time, with a decreasing number of reported bugs before releases, an increasing bug fixing rate and an increasingly balanced bug handling workload before and after releases. The transition to a quarterly release cycle continued to improve bug handling. In addition, more effort is spent on bug fixing during the feature freeze period, while the bug handling rates do not differ between both periods

A Longitudinal Analysis of Bug Handling Across Eclipse Releases

International audienceLarge open source software projects, like Eclipse, follow a continuous software development process, with a regular release cycle. During each release, new bugs are reported, triaged and resolved. Previous studies have focused on various aspects of bug fixing, such as bug triaging, bug prediction, and bug process analysis. Most studies, however, do not distinguish between what happens before and after each scheduled release. We are also unaware of studies that compare bug fixing activities across different project releases. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the bug handling process of Eclipse over a 15-year period, considering 138K bug reports from Bugzilla, including 16 annual Eclipse releases and two quarterly releases in 2018. We compare the bug resolution rate, the fixing rate, the bug triaging time and the fixing time before and after each release date, and we study the possible impact of "release pressure". Among others, our results reveal that Eclipse bug handling activity is improving over time, with an important decrease in the number of reported bugs before releases, an increase in the bug fixing rate and an increasingly balanced bug handling workload before and after releases. The recent transition from an annual to a quarterly release cycle continued to improve the bug handling process

Public health effects of travel-related policies on the COVID-19 pandemic: A mixed-methods systematic review

Objectives: To map travel policies implemented due to COVID-19 during 2020, and conduct a mixed methods systematic review of health effects of such policies, and related contextual factors. Design: Policy mapping and systematic review. Data sources and Eligibility Criteria: for the policy mapping, we searched websites of relevant government bodies and used data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker for a convenient sample of 31 countries across different regions. For the systematic review, we searched Medline (Ovid), PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and COVID-19 specific databases. We included randomized controlled trial, non-randomized studies, modeling studies, and qualitative studies. Two independent reviewers selected studies, abstracted data and assessed risk of bias. Results: Most countries adopted a total border closure at the start of the pandemic. For the remainder of the year, partial border closure banning arrivals from some countries or regions was the most widely adopted measure, followed by mandatory quarantine and screening of travelers. The systematic search identified 69 eligible studies, including 50 modeling studies. Both observational and modeling evidence suggest that border closure may reduce the number of COVID-19 cases, disease spread across countries and between regions, and slow the progression of the outbreak. These effects are likely to be enhanced when implemented early, and when combined with measures reducing transmission rates in the community. Quarantine of travelers may decrease the number of COVID-19 cases but its effectiveness depends on compliance and enforcement and is more effective if followed by testing, especially when less than 14 day-quarantine is considered. Screening at departure and/or arrival is unlikely to detect a large proportion of cases or to delay an outbreak. Effectiveness of screening may be improved with increased sensitivity of screening tests, awareness of travelers, asymptomatic screening, and exit screening at country source. While four studies on contextual evidence found that the majority of the public is supportive of travel restrictions, they uncovered concerns about the unintended harms of those policies.Peer Reviewe

Comprendre l'impact des politiques de publication sur les processus de développement logiciel

The advent of delivering new features faster has led many software projects to change their development processes towards more rapid release models where releases are shipped using release cycles of weeks or days. The adoption of rapid release practices has significantly reduced the amount of stabilization time, the time it takes for a software product’s failure rate to reach close to the steady-state, available for new features. This forces organizations to change their development process and tools to release to the public, in a timely manner and with good quality. Rapid releases are claimed to offer a reduced time-to-market and faster user feedback; end-users bene- fit of faster access to functionality improvements and security updates and improve turnaround time for fixing bad bugs. Despite these benefits, previous research has shown that rapid releases often come at the expense of reduced software reliability. Despite the increasing adoption of rapid releases in open-source and commercial soft- ware, the effects of this practice on the software development process are not well understood.The goal of this thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of how rapid releases impact different parts of the open-source software development process. We present empirical evidence about the short and long-term impact of rapid releases on the bug handling and testing process in open source organizations; and the plan and tools that are needed for successful adoption of rapid releases. This thesis presents an empirical case study of rapid releases in Eclipse and Mozilla Firefox projects. We follow a mixed-methods approach where we analyze software repositories, containing different types of data such as source code, testing data and software issues; and we conduct a survey with Eclipse developers. This help in understanding the evolution and changes of the software development process, the plans and practices that are needed for successful adoption of rapid releases and we identify several future research directions calling for further investigation.Avec la livraison rapide de nouvelles fonctionnalités, de nombreux projets logiciels ont modifié leurs processus de développement pour aller vers des modèles où les versions sont publiées selon des cycles courts de quelques semaines ou quelques jours. L’adoption de politiques de publication rapide des logiciels a considérablement réduit le temps de stabilisation, c’est-à-dire le temps nécessaire pour que le taux d’échec d’un produit logiciel atteigne un état stable pour l’ensemble des nouvelles fonctionnalités. Cette mise en place de livraisons rapides a obligé les organisations et les entreprises à modifier leur processus de développement et leurs outils pour publier les nouvelles versions, ceci en un temps réduit tout en garantissant la qualité. Ces nouveaux processus de développement sont censés offrir un délai réduit de mise sur le marché, un retour d'information rapide de la part des utilisateurs. Ils doivent également améliorer le temps de traitement de correction des bugs. Les utilisateurs finaux bénéficient alors d’un accès rapide aux améliorations des fonctionnalités avec des mises à jour fiables. Malgré ces avantages, des recherches antérieures ont montré que les versions rapides se font souvent au détriment de la fiabilité logicielle. Cependant, avec l'adoption croissante des versions rapides des logiciels open source et commerciaux, les effets de cette pratique sur le processus de développement logiciel ne sont pas bien compris.L'objectif de cette thèse est de fournir une compréhension approfondie de l'impact de la livraison rapide de versions dans les différentes phases du processus de développement de logiciels open source. Cette thèse présente une étude de cas empirique de la livraison rapide de versions dans les projets Eclipse et Mozilla Firefox. Nous présentons les résultats d’expériences sur l'impact à court et à long terme de la livraison rapide de versions sur le processus de gestion et de test des bugs dans les organisations open source, ainsi que le plan et les outils nécessaires pour une adoption réussie des livraisons rapides de versions. Nous suivons une approche avec des méthodes mixtes où nous analysons les référentiels de logiciels, contenant différents types de données tels que le code source, les données de test et les rapports de bugs. Nous avons également mené une enquête auprès des développeurs Eclipse. Nos travaux aident à comprendre l'évolution et les changements du processus de développement logiciel ainsi que les plans et les pratiques nécessaires pour une adoption réussie de la livraison rapide de versions et identifient plusieurs perspectives de recherche

Comprendre l'impact des politiques de publication sur les processus de développement logiciel

The advent of delivering new features faster has led many software projects to change their development processes towards more rapid release models where releases are shipped using release cycles of weeks or days. The adoption of rapid release practices has significantly reduced the amount of stabilization time, the time it takes for a software product’s failure rate to reach close to the steady-state, available for new features. This forces organizations to change their development process and tools to release to the public, in a timely manner and with good quality. Rapid releases are claimed to offer a reduced time-to-market and faster user feedback; end-users bene- fit of faster access to functionality improvements and security updates and improve turnaround time for fixing bad bugs. Despite these benefits, previous research has shown that rapid releases often come at the expense of reduced software reliability. Despite the increasing adoption of rapid releases in open-source and commercial soft- ware, the effects of this practice on the software development process are not well understood.The goal of this thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of how rapid releases impact different parts of the open-source software development process. We present empirical evidence about the short and long-term impact of rapid releases on the bug handling and testing process in open source organizations; and the plan and tools that are needed for successful adoption of rapid releases. This thesis presents an empirical case study of rapid releases in Eclipse and Mozilla Firefox projects. We follow a mixed-methods approach where we analyze software repositories, containing different types of data such as source code, testing data and software issues; and we conduct a survey with Eclipse developers. This help in understanding the evolution and changes of the software development process, the plans and practices that are needed for successful adoption of rapid releases and we identify several future research directions calling for further investigation.Avec la livraison rapide de nouvelles fonctionnalités, de nombreux projets logiciels ont modifié leurs processus de développement pour aller vers des modèles où les versions sont publiées selon des cycles courts de quelques semaines ou quelques jours. L’adoption de politiques de publication rapide des logiciels a considérablement réduit le temps de stabilisation, c’est-à-dire le temps nécessaire pour que le taux d’échec d’un produit logiciel atteigne un état stable pour l’ensemble des nouvelles fonctionnalités. Cette mise en place de livraisons rapides a obligé les organisations et les entreprises à modifier leur processus de développement et leurs outils pour publier les nouvelles versions, ceci en un temps réduit tout en garantissant la qualité. Ces nouveaux processus de développement sont censés offrir un délai réduit de mise sur le marché, un retour d'information rapide de la part des utilisateurs. Ils doivent également améliorer le temps de traitement de correction des bugs. Les utilisateurs finaux bénéficient alors d’un accès rapide aux améliorations des fonctionnalités avec des mises à jour fiables. Malgré ces avantages, des recherches antérieures ont montré que les versions rapides se font souvent au détriment de la fiabilité logicielle. Cependant, avec l'adoption croissante des versions rapides des logiciels open source et commerciaux, les effets de cette pratique sur le processus de développement logiciel ne sont pas bien compris.L'objectif de cette thèse est de fournir une compréhension approfondie de l'impact de la livraison rapide de versions dans les différentes phases du processus de développement de logiciels open source. Cette thèse présente une étude de cas empirique de la livraison rapide de versions dans les projets Eclipse et Mozilla Firefox. Nous présentons les résultats d’expériences sur l'impact à court et à long terme de la livraison rapide de versions sur le processus de gestion et de test des bugs dans les organisations open source, ainsi que le plan et les outils nécessaires pour une adoption réussie des livraisons rapides de versions. Nous suivons une approche avec des méthodes mixtes où nous analysons les référentiels de logiciels, contenant différents types de données tels que le code source, les données de test et les rapports de bugs. Nous avons également mené une enquête auprès des développeurs Eclipse. Nos travaux aident à comprendre l'évolution et les changements du processus de développement logiciel ainsi que les plans et les pratiques nécessaires pour une adoption réussie de la livraison rapide de versions et identifient plusieurs perspectives de recherche

Comprendre l'impact des politiques de version sur les processus de développement de logiciels.

The advent of delivering new features faster has led many software projects to change their development processes towards more rapid release models where releases are shipped using release cycles of weeks or days. The adoption of rapid release practices has significantly reduced the amount of stabilization time, the time it takes for a software product’s failure rate to reach close to the steady-state, available for new features. This forces organizations to change their development process and tools to release to the public, in a timely manner and with good quality. Rapid releases are claimed to offer a reduced time-to-market and faster user feedback; end-users bene- fit of faster access to functionality improvements and security updates and improve turnaround time for fixing bad bugs. Despite these benefits, previous research has shown that rapid releases often come at the expense of reduced software reliability. Despite the increasing adoption of rapid releases in open-source and commercial soft- ware, the effects of this practice on the software development process are not well understood.The goal of this thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of how rapid releases impact different parts of the open-source software development process. We present empirical evidence about the short and long-term impact of rapid releases on the bug handling and testing process in open source organizations; and the plan and tools needed for successful adoption of rapid releases. This thesis presents an empirical case study of rapid releases in Eclipse and Mozilla Firefox projects. We follow a mixed-methods approach where we analyze software repositories, containing different types of data such as source code, testing data and software issues; and we conduct a survey with Eclipse developers. This helps understand the evolution and changes of the software development process, the plans and practices needed for successful adoption of rapid releases, and identifying several future research directions calling for further investigation.Avec la livraison rapide de nouvelles fonctionnalités, de nombreux projets logiciels ont modifié leurs processus de développement pour aller vers des modèles où les versions sont publiées selon des cycles courts de quelques semaines ou quelques jours. L’adoption de pratiques de publication rapide des logiciels a considérablement réduit le temps de stabilisation, c’est-à-dire le temps nécessaire pour que le taux d’échec d’un produit logiciel atteigne un état stable pour l’ensemble des nouvelles fonctionnalités. Cette mise en place de livraisons rapides a obligé les organisations et les entreprises à modifier leur processus de développement et leurs outils pour publier les nouvelles versions, ceci en un temps réduit tout en garantissant la qualité. Ces nouveaux processus de développement sont censés offrir un délai réduit de mise sur le marché, et un retour d'information rapide de la part des utilisateurs. Ils doivent également améliorer le temps de traitement de correction des bugs. Les utilisateurs finaux bénéficient alors d’un accès rapide aux améliorations des fonctionnalités avec des mises à jour fiables. Malgré ces avantages, des recherches antérieures ont montré que les versions rapides se font souvent au détriment de la fiabilité logicielle. Cependant, avec l'adoption croissante des livraisons rapides des logiciels open source et commerciaux, les effets de cette pratique sur le processus de développement logiciel ne sont pas bien compris. L'objectif de cette thèse est de fournir une compréhension approfondie de l'impact de la livraison rapide de versions dans les différentes phases du processus de développement de logiciels open source . Cette thèse présente une étude de cas empirique de la livraison rapide de versions dans les projets Eclipse et Mozilla Firefox . Nous présentons les résultats d’expériences sur l'impact à court et à long terme de la livraison rapide de versions sur le processus de gestion et de test des bugs dans les organisations open source , ainsi que le plan et les outils nécessaires pour une adoption réussie des livraisons rapides. Nous suivons une approche avec des méthodes mixtes où nous analysons les référentiels de logiciels, contenant différents types de données tels que le code source, les données de test et les rapports de bugs. Nous avons également mené une enquête auprès des développeurs Eclipse . Nos travaux aident à comprendre l'évolution et les changements du processus de développement logiciel ainsi que les plans et les pratiques nécessaires pour une adoption réussie de la livraison rapide de versions et identifient plusieurs perspectives de recherche

The General Index of Software Engineering Papers

International audienceWe introduce the General Index of Software Engineering Papers, a dataset of fulltext-indexed papers from the most prominent scientific venues in the field of Software Engineering. The dataset includes both complete bibliographic information and indexed ngrams (sequence of contiguous words after removal of stopwords and non-words, for a total of 577 276 382 unique n-grams in this release) with length 1 to 5 for 44 581 papers retrieved from 34 venues over the 1971-2020 period.The dataset serves use cases in the field of meta-research, allowing to introspect the output of software engineering research even when access to papers or scholarly search engines is not possible (e.g., due to contractual reasons). The dataset also contributes to making such analyses reproducible and independently verifiable, as opposed to what happens when they are conducted using 3rd-party and non-open scholarly indexing services.The dataset is available as a portable Postgres database dump and released as open data

Software Artifact Mining in Software Engineering Conferences: A Meta-Analysis

International audienceBackground: Software development results in the production of various types of artifacts: source code, version control system metadata, bug reports, mailing list conversations, test data, etc. Empirical software engineering (ESE) has thrived mining those artifacts to uncover the inner workings of software development and improve its practices. But which artifacts are studied in the field is a moving target, which we study empirically in this paper.Aims: We quantitatively characterize the most frequently mined and co-mined software artifacts in ESE research and the research purposes they support.Method: We conduct a meta-analysis of artifact mining studies published in 11 top conferences in ESE, for a total of 9621 papers. We use natural language processing (NLP) techniques to characterize the types of software artifacts that are most often mined and their evolution over a 16-year period (2004-2020). We analyze the combinations of artifact types that are most often mined together, as well as the relationship between study purposes and mined artifacts.Results: We find that: (1) mining happens in the vast majority of analyzed papers, (2) source code and test data are the most mined artifacts, (3) there is an increasing interest in mining novel artifacts, together with source code, (4) researchers are most interested in the evaluation of software systems and use all possible empirical signals to support that goal

A Longitudinal Analysis of Bug Handling Across Eclipse Releases

International audienceLarge open source software projects, like Eclipse, follow a continuous software development process, with a regular release cycle. During each release, new bugs are reported, triaged and resolved. Previous studies have focused on various aspects of bug fixing, such as bug triaging, bug prediction, and bug process analysis. Most studies, however, do not distinguish between what happens before and after each scheduled release. We are also unaware of studies that compare bug fixing activities across different project releases. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the bug handling process of Eclipse over a 15-year period, considering 138K bug reports from Bugzilla, including 16 annual Eclipse releases and two quarterly releases in 2018. We compare the bug resolution rate, the fixing rate, the bug triaging time and the fixing time before and after each release date, and we study the possible impact of "release pressure". Among others, our results reveal that Eclipse bug handling activity is improving over time, with an important decrease in the number of reported bugs before releases, an increase in the bug fixing rate and an increasingly balanced bug handling workload before and after releases. The recent transition from an annual to a quarterly release cycle continued to improve the bug handling process