A longitudinal analysis of bug handling across eclipse releases

Zeinab Abou Khalil; Eleni Constantinou; Tom Mens; Laurence Duchien; Clément Quinton

doi:10.1109/ICSME.2019.00010

A longitudinal analysis of bug handling across eclipse releases

Zeinab Abou Khalil, Eleni Constantinou, Tom Mens, Laurence Duchien, Clément Quinton

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Large open source software projects, like Eclipse, follow a continuous software development pro- cess, with a regular release cycle. During each re- lease, 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.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Number of pages	12
ISBN (Electronic)	9781728130941
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2019.00010
Publication status	Published - Sept 2019
Event	35th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution - Cleveland, Ohio, United States Duration: 30 Sept 2019 → 4 Oct 2019

Conference

Conference	35th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution
Abbreviated title	ICSME 2019
Country/Territory	United States
City	Cleveland, Ohio
Period	30/09/19 → 4/10/19

Keywords

Bugzilla
Releases
bug fixing process
bug triaging
empirical analysis
rapid release cycle
software maintenance

Access to Document

10.1109/ICSME.2019.00010

Cite this

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title = "A longitudinal analysis of bug handling across eclipse releases",

abstract = "Large open source software projects, like Eclipse, follow a continuous software development pro- cess, with a regular release cycle. During each re- lease, 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.",

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Abou Khalil, Z, Constantinou, E, Mens, T, Duchien, L & Quinton, C 2019, A longitudinal analysis of bug handling across eclipse releases. in 2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)., 8919074, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 35th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, Cleveland, Ohio, United States, 30/09/19. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2019.00010

A longitudinal analysis of bug handling across eclipse releases. / Abou Khalil, Zeinab; Constantinou, Eleni; Mens, Tom et al.
2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2019. 8919074.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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AB - Large open source software projects, like Eclipse, follow a continuous software development pro- cess, with a regular release cycle. During each re- lease, 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.

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KW - Releases

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T2 - 35th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution

Y2 - 30 September 2019 through 4 October 2019

ER -

A longitudinal analysis of bug handling across eclipse releases

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Keywords

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