Recovering traceability links between source code and fixed bugs via patch analysis

Abstract

Traceability links can be recovered using data mined from a revision control system, such as CVS, and an issue tracking system, such as Bugzilla. Existing approaches to recover links between a bug and the methods changed to fix the bug rely on the presence of the bug's identifier in a CVS log message. In this paper we present an approach that relies instead on the presence of a patch in the issue report for the bug. That is, rather than analyzing deltas retrieved from CVS to recover links, our approach analyzes patches retrieved from Bugzilla. We use BugTrace, the tool implementing our approach, to conduct a case study in which we compare the links recovered by our approach to links recovered by manual inspection. The results of the case study support the efficacy of our approach. After describing the limitations of our case study, we conclude by reviewing closely related work and suggesting possible future work.