Code Authorship and Fault-proneness of Open-Source Android Applications : An Empirical Study
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Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Conference on Predictive Models and Data Analytics in Software Engineering
Abstract
In recent years, many research studies have shown how
human factors play a significant role in the quality of software components.
Code authorship metrics have been introduced to establish
a chain of responsibility and simplify management when assigning
tasks in large and distributed software development teams. Researchers
have investigated the relationship between code authorship
metrics and fault occurrences in software systems. However,
we have observed that these studies have only been carried on large
software systems having hundreds to thousands of contributors.
In our preliminary investigations on Android applications that are
considered to be relatively small, we observed that applications
systems are not totally owned by a single developer (as one could
expect) and that cases of no clear authorship also exist like in large
systems. To this end, we do believe that the Android applications
could face the same challenges faced by large software systems and
could also benefit from such studies.
Goal: We investigate the extent to which the findings obtained on
large software systems applies to Android applications.
Approach: Building on the designs of previous studies, we analyze
278 Android applications carefully selected from GitHub. We extract
code authorship metrics from the applications and examine
the relationship between code authorship metrics and faults using
statistical modeling.
Results: Our analyses confirm most of the previous findings, i.e.,
Android applications with higher levels of code authorship among
contributors experience fewer faults.
Description
Keywords
Software faults, Minor Contributors, Major Contributors, Most Values Contributors, Total Contributors
Citation
Businge, J., Kawuma, S., Bainomugisha, E., Khomh, F., & Nabaasa, E. (2017, November). Code authorship and fault-proneness of open-source android applications: An empirical study. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Predictive Models and Data Analytics in Software Engineering (pp. 33-42).