Partitioning composite code changes to facilitate code review

Yida Tao; Sunghun Kim

doi:10.1109/MSR.2015.24

Partitioning composite code changes to facilitate code review

Yida Tao, Sunghun Kim

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference Proceeding/Report › Conference Paper published in a book › peer-review

61 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Developers expend significant effort on reviewing source code changes. Hence, the comprehensibility of code changes directly affects development productivity. Our prior study has suggested that composite code changes, which mix multiple development issues together, are typically difficult to review. Unfortunately, our manual inspection of 453 open source code changes reveals a non-trivial occurrence (up to 29%) of such composite changes. In this paper, we propose a heuristic-based approach to automatically partition composite changes, such that each sub-change in the partition is more cohesive and self-contained. Our quantitative and qualitative evaluation results are promising in demonstrating the potential benefits of our approach for facilitating code review of composite code changes.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings - 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015
Publisher	IEEE Computer Society
Pages	180-190
Number of pages	11
ISBN (Electronic)	9780769555942
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR.2015.24
Publication status	Published - 4 Aug 2015
Event	12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015, co-located with the 37th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2015 - Florence, Italy Duration: 16 May 2015 → 17 May 2015

Publication series

Name	IEEE International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories
Volume	2015-August
ISSN (Print)	2160-1852
ISSN (Electronic)	2160-1860

Conference

Conference	12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015, co-located with the 37th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2015
Country/Territory	Italy
City	Florence
Period	16/05/15 → 17/05/15

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.

Keywords

Cloning
Force
Inspection
Libraries
Manuals
Pattern matching
Software

Access to Document

10.1109/MSR.2015.24

Cite this

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title = "Partitioning composite code changes to facilitate code review",

abstract = "Developers expend significant effort on reviewing source code changes. Hence, the comprehensibility of code changes directly affects development productivity. Our prior study has suggested that composite code changes, which mix multiple development issues together, are typically difficult to review. Unfortunately, our manual inspection of 453 open source code changes reveals a non-trivial occurrence (up to 29\%) of such composite changes. In this paper, we propose a heuristic-based approach to automatically partition composite changes, such that each sub-change in the partition is more cohesive and self-contained. Our quantitative and qualitative evaluation results are promising in demonstrating the potential benefits of our approach for facilitating code review of composite code changes.",

keywords = "Cloning, Force, Inspection, Libraries, Manuals, Pattern matching, Software",

author = "Yida Tao and Sunghun Kim",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2015 IEEE.; 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015, co-located with the 37th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2015 ; Conference date: 16-05-2015 Through 17-05-2015",

year = "2015",

month = aug,

day = "4",

doi = "10.1109/MSR.2015.24",

language = "English",

series = "IEEE International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories",

publisher = "IEEE Computer Society",

pages = "180--190",

booktitle = "Proceedings - 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015",

}

Tao, Y & Kim, S 2015, Partitioning composite code changes to facilitate code review. in Proceedings - 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015., 7180078, IEEE International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, vol. 2015-August, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 180-190, 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015, co-located with the 37th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2015, Florence, Italy, 16/05/15. https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR.2015.24

Partitioning composite code changes to facilitate code review. / Tao, Yida; Kim, Sunghun.
Proceedings - 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2015. IEEE Computer Society, 2015. p. 180-190 7180078 (IEEE International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories; Vol. 2015-August).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference Proceeding/Report › Conference Paper published in a book › peer-review

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KW - Cloning

KW - Force

KW - Inspection

KW - Libraries

KW - Manuals

KW - Pattern matching

KW - Software

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Partitioning composite code changes to facilitate code review

Abstract

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this