A systematic mapping study on mining software repositories

Abstract

Background: Software repositories provide large amount of data encompassing software changes throughout its evolution. Those repositories can be effectively used to extract and analyze pertinent information and derive conclusions related to the software history or its current snapshot. Objective: This work aims to investigate recent studies on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) approaches collecting evidences about software analysis goals (purpose, focus, and object of analysis), data sources, evaluation methods, tools, and how the area is evolving. Method: A systematic mapping study was performed to identify and analyze research on mining software repositories by analyzing five editions of Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories -- the main conference on this area. Results: MSR approaches have been used for many different goals, mainly for comprehension of defects, analysis of the contribution and behavior of developers, and software evolution comprehension. Besides, some gaps were identified with respect to their goals, focus, and data source type (e.g. lack of usage of comments to identify smells, refactoring, and issues of software quality). Regarding the evaluation method, our analysis pointed out to an extensive usage of some types of empirical evaluation. Conclusion: Studies of the MSR have focused on different goals, however there are still many research opportunities to be explored and issues associated with MSR that should be considered.