Revisiting Code Ownership and Its Relationship with Software Quality in the Scope of Modern Code Review
Revisiting Code Ownership and Its Relationship with Software Quality in the Scope of Modern Code Review
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DOI：
10.1145/2884781.2884852
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发表时间：
2016-05
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Patanamon Thongtanunam;Shane McIntosh;A. Hassan;Hajimu Iida
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作者：
Patanamon Thongtanunam;Shane McIntosh;A. Hassan;Hajimu Iida
代码所有权建立了大型软件系统中模块的责任链。尽管先前的工作揭示了代码所有权启发式和软件质量之间的联系，但是这些启发式仅仅依赖于代码变更的作者。除了编写代码更改之外，开发人员还通过审查代码更改对模块做出重要贡献。事实上，最近的工作表明，审查者在现代代码审查过程中非常活跃，经常建议替代解决方案或提供代码更改的更新。在本文中，我们使用代码审查活动来补充传统的代码所有权启发式方法。通过对大型Qt和OpenStack系统的六个版本的案例研究，我们发现：(1)67%-86%的开发人员没有为模块编写任何代码更改，但仍然通过审查21%-39%的代码更改积极贡献；(2)意识到审查活动的代码所有权启发式与软件质量有关系；(3)没有专业知识的审查人员的比例与发布后缺陷的可能性有很强的关系。我们的结果表明，审查活动抓住了代码所有权的一个重要方面，并且应该在未来的研究中包含它的近似值。
Code ownership establishes a chain of responsibility for modules in large software systems. Although prior work uncovers a link between code ownership heuristics and software quality, these heuristics rely solely on the authorship of code changes. In addition to authoring code changes, developers also make important contributions to a module by reviewing code changes. Indeed, recent work shows that reviewers are highly active in modern code review processes, often suggesting alternative solutions or providing updates to the code changes. In this paper, we complement traditional code ownership heuristics using code review activity. Through a case study of six releases of the large Qt and OpenStack systems, we find that: (1) 67%-86% of developers did not author any code changes for a module, but still actively contributed by reviewing 21%-39% of the code changes, (2) code ownership heuristics that are aware of reviewing activity share a relationship with software quality, and (3) the proportion of reviewers without expertise shares a strong, increasing relationship with the likelihood of having post-release defects. Our results suggest that reviewing activity captures an important aspect of code ownership, and should be included in approximations of it in future studies.