Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

8-2020

Abstract

Bug reports play an important role in the process of debugging and fixing bugs. To reduce the burden of bug report managers and facilitate the process of bug fixing, a great amount of software engineering research has been invested into automated bug report management techniques. However, the verdict is still open whether such techniques are actually required and applicable outside of the theoretical research domain. To fill this gap, in this paper, we conducted a survey among 327 practitioners to gain their insights into various categories of automated bug report management techniques. Specifically, in the survey, we asked them to rate the importance of such techniques and provide the rationales of their ratings. To get deeper insight into practitioners' perspective, we conducted follow-up interviews with 25 interviewees selected from the survey respondents. Through the survey and the interviews, we gained a better understanding of the perceived usefulness (or its lack) of different categories of automated bug report management techniques. Based on the survey and interview results, we summarized some potential research directions in developing techniques to help developers better manage bug reports.

Keywords

Bug Report, Developer Perception, Computer bugs, Maintenance engineering, Software, Interviews, Software engineering

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Volume

46

Issue

8

First Page

836

Last Page

862

ISSN

0098-5589

Identifier

10.1109/TSE.2018.2870414

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2018.2870414

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