Textual alusions to artifacts in software-related repositories

ABSTRACT

Much of what is written about a software project is soon forgotten. Software repositories are full of valuable information about the project: Bug descriptions, check-in messages, email and newsgroup archives, specifications, design documents, product documentation, and product support logs contain a wealth of information that can potentially help software developers resolve crucial questions about the history, rationale, and future plans for source code. For a variety of reasons, developers rarely turn to these resources when trying to answer these questions. We are building a full-text search that encompasses multiple repositories. To effectively implement full-text search in the absence of hyperlinks we propose detecting textual allusions to software artifacts in natural-language prose. Allusions are shown to contribute a significant portion of the relationships represented in the graph.

REFERENCES

• 1: Davor Cubranic , Gail C. Murphy , Janice Singer , Kellogg S. Booth, Hipikat: A Project Memory for Software Development, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.31 n.6, p.446-465, June 2005 [doi>10.1109/TSE.2005.71]
• 2: Robert DeLine , Mary Czerwinski , George Robertson, Easing Program Comprehension by Sharing Navigation Data, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC'05), p.241-248, September 20-24, 2005 [doi>10.1109/VLHCC.2005.32]
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.1 Content Analysis and Indexing

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
          Subjects: Retrieval models
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Computer-supported cooperative work

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.3 Software Management
          Subjects: Software development; Software maintenance

General Terms:
Documentation, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
project memory, search, software artifacts, software development