An Empirical Study of the Effect of File Editing Patterns on Software Quality
While some developers like to work on multiple code change requests, others might prefer to handle one change request at a time. This juggling of change requests and the large number of developers working in parallel often lead to files being edited as part of different change requests by one or several developers. Existing research has warned the community about the potential negative impacts of some file editing patterns on software quality. For example, when several developers concurrently edit a file as part of different change requests, they are likely to introduce bugs due to limited awareness of other changes. However, very few studies have provided quantitative evidence to support these claims. In this paper, we identify four file editing patterns. We perform an empirical study on three open source software systems to investigate the individual and the combined impact of the four patterns on software quality. We find that: (1) files that are edited concurrently by many developers have on average 2.46 times more future bugs than files that are not concurrently edited; (2) files edited in parallel with other files by the same developer have on average 1.67 times more future bugs than files individually edited; (3) files edited over an extended period (i.e., above the third quartile) of time have 2.28 times more future bugs than other files; and (4) files edited with long interruptions (i.e., above the third quartile) have 2.1 times more future bugs than other files. When more than one editing patterns are followed by one or many developers during the editing of a file, we observe that the number of future bugs in the file can be as high as 1.6 times the average number of future bugs in files edited following a single editing pattern. These results can be used by software development teams to warn developers about risky file editing patterns.
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An Empirical Study of the Effect of File Editing Patterns on Software Quality
- 1. An Empirical Study of the Effect of File Editing Patterns on Software Quality Feng Zhang, Foutse Khomh, Ying Zou and Ahmed E. Hassan
- 2. 2 Do developers follow some file editing patterns? Concurrent? Extended? Interrupted? File Editing
- 3. 3 Concurrent? Extended? Interrupted? ? ? ? What’s the impact on software quality? File Editing
- 4. 4 Examples
- 5. 5 1. Example on concurrent editing BugzillaTaskEditorPage.java Frank Steffen Pingel David Green
- 6. 6 1. Concurrent Editing Several developers edit the same file concurrently.
- 7. 7 2. Example on parallel editing AbstractTaskEditor Page.java Frank TasksUiPlugin.javaPlanningPerspective Factory.java
- 8. 8 2. Parallel Editing Multiple files are edited in parallel by the same developer.
- 9. 9 3. Example on extended editing DiscoveryViewer.java 4.5 hours Mylyn Project 1.25 hours 3.6 times
- 10. 10 3. Extended Editing Developers spend longer time editing a file. (threshold: third quantile)
- 11. 11 4. Example on interrupted editing TaskCompareDialog.java 338 hours Mylyn Project 2 hours 164 times
- 12. 12 4. Interrupted Editing There is a longer idle period during the editing of a file. (threshold: third quantile)
- 13. 13 File Editing Patterns Summary 1. Concurrent Editing 2. Parallel Editing 3. Extended Editing 4. Interrupted Editing
- 14. 14 How to evaluate the effect of file editing patterns? Time Split Date Density of Future Bug File Editing Patterns
- 16. 16 Description of Data Split Date: 2011-01-01 119 developers 98 bugs 2,140 files 5,070 CVS logs
- 17. 17 1. Recovering File Edit History Data Processing 2. Recovering File Change History 3. Identifying File Editing Patterns bug Id density of bug
- 18. 18 Research Questions RQ1: Are there different file editing patterns? RQ2: Do file editing patterns lead to more bugs? RQ3: Do interactions among file editing patterns lead to more bugs?
- 19. 19 RQ1: Are there different file editing patterns? Occurrences of file editing patterns and their interactions 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 1. Concurrent 2. Parallel 3. Extended 4. Interrupted File editing patterns do exist Combinations of patterns Single Pattern NoPattern
- 20. 20 RQ2: Do concurrent editing pattern lead to more bugs? Odds Ratio of two groups: NC: no concurrent editing C: concurrent editing 2.1 times more likely to experience a future bug if concurrent editing pattern happens
- 21. 21 RQ2: Level of involvement in concurrent editing pattern Definition of Level average number of developers involved in a concurrent editing of a file. 0 1 2 3 No Pattern ≤3rd quantile > 3rd quantile 2.4* 1.6Statistically significant Not statistically significant
- 22. 22 RQ2: Do parallel editing patterns lead to more bugs? Odds Ratio of two groups: NP: no parallel editing P: parallel editing 1.9 times more likely to experience a future bug if parallel editing pattern happens
- 23. 23 RQ2: Level of involvement in parallel editing pattern Definition of Level average number of files edited in parallel with a file. 0 1 2 3 4 5 No Pattern ≤3rd quantile > 3rd quantile 1.3 3.8*Statistically significant Not statistically significant
- 24. 24 RQ2: Do extended editing patterns lead to more bugs? 1.9 times more likely to experience a future bug if extended editing pattern happens Odds Ratio of two groups: NE: no extended editing E: extended editing
- 25. 25 RQ2: Level of involvement in extended pattern Definition of Level average editing time of a file. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 No Pattern ≤3rd quantile > 3rd quantile 1.0 1.9* Statistically significant Not statistically significant
- 26. 26 RQ2: Do interrupted editing patterns lead to more bugs? 1.6 times more likely to experience a future bug if interrupted editing pattern happens Odds Ratio of two groups: NI: no interrupted editing I: interrupted editing
- 27. 27 RQ2: Level of involvement in interrupted pattern Definition of Level average interruption time of a file. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 No Pattern ≤3rd quantile > 3rd quantile 1.2 1.8* Statistically significant Not statistically significant
- 28. 28 RQ3: Do interactions among file editing patterns lead to more bugs? Odds ratio of 16 groups. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Concurrent 2. Parallel 3. Extended 4. Interrupted Combinations of patterns are more risky than single pattern Combinations of patterns Single Pattern NoPattern
- 29. 29 Conclusion
- 30. 30 Concurrent Parallel Extended Interrupted 2.1Odds Ratio 1.9Odds Ratio 1.9Odds Ratio 1.6Odds Ratio
- 31. 31 Average Bug Density: as high as 1.7 times Single v.s. Interactions