Are Similar Bugs Fixed with Similar Change Operations? An Empirical Study

Abstract

Fine-grained change operations can help software developers fix software bugs more accurately and efficiently. However, the current fine-grained change operations are only used in specific fixing process, such as fixing of If statement. In this paper, we conducted an empirical study to explore the fine-grained change operations for bug fixing. Based on the Mozilla bug data, we examined whether similar bugs are fixed with similar change operations. The results show that: First, for bug reports with similar descriptions or bug-fix commits with similar descriptions, their corresponding fine-grained change operations are not related; Second, in the case where the descriptions of both bug reports and bug-fix commits are similar, the fine-grained change operations in patch code are not related; Third, by classifying bug reports, we find that the change operations in the same bug report category are similar; Finally, by analyzing the fine-grained change operations for each bug, we present some combined patterns that are often used together.