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International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Informatics

SOFSEM 2018: SOFSEM 2018: Theory and Practice of Computer Science pp 255–268Cite as

Automatic Decomposition of Java Open Source Pull Requests: A Replication Study

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Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNTCS,volume 10706)

Abstract

The presence of large changesets containing several independent modifications (e.g. bug fixes, refactorings, features) can negatively affect the efficacy of code review. To cope with this problem, Barnett et al. developed ClusterChanges — a lightweight static analysis technique for decomposing changesets in different partitions that can be reviewed independently. They have found that ClusterChanges can indeed decompose such changesets and that developers agree with their decomposition. However, the authors’ restricted their analysis to software that is: (i) closed source, (ii) written in C# and (iii) developed by a single organization. To address this threat to validity, we implemented JClusterChanges, a free and open source (FOSS) implementation of ClusterChanges for Java software, and replicated the original Barnett et al. study using changesets from Java open source projects hosted on GitHub. We found that open source changesets are similar to the changesets of the original study. Thus, our research confirms that the problem is relevant to other environments and provides a FOSS implementation of ClusterChanges that not only shows the feasibility of the technique in other contexts but can also be used to help future research.

Keywords

  • Modern code review
  • Changeset decomposition

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), Campina Grande, PB, Brazil

    Victor da C. Luna Freire, João Brunet & Jorge C. A. de Figueiredo

Authors
  1. Victor da C. Luna Freire
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  2. João Brunet
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  3. Jorge C. A. de Figueiredo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Victor da C. Luna Freire .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Vienna University of Technology , Vienna, Austria

    A Min Tjoa

  2. ISAE-ENSMA, Chasseneuil-du-Poitou, France

    Ladjel Bellatreche

  3. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Stefan Biffl

  4. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jan van Leeuwen

  5. Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jiří Wiedermann

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Luna Freire, V.d.C., Brunet, J., de Figueiredo, J.C.A. (2018). Automatic Decomposition of Java Open Source Pull Requests: A Replication Study. In: Tjoa, A., Bellatreche, L., Biffl, S., van Leeuwen, J., Wiedermann, J. (eds) SOFSEM 2018: Theory and Practice of Computer Science. SOFSEM 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10706. Edizioni della Normale, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73117-9_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73117-9_18

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  • Publisher Name: Edizioni della Normale, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73116-2

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