Improving Logging Prediction on Imbalanced Datasets: A Case Study on Open Source Java Projects

Abstract

Logging is an important yet tough decision for OSS developers. Machine-learning models are useful in improving several steps of OSS development, including logging. Several recent studies propose machine-learning models to predict logged code construct. The prediction performances of these models are limited due to the class-imbalance problem since the number of logged code constructs is small as compared to non-logged code constructs. No previous study analyzes the class-imbalance problem for logged code construct prediction. The authors first analyze the performances of J48, RF, and SVM classifiers for catch-blocks and if-blocks logged code constructs prediction on imbalanced datasets. Second, the authors propose LogIm, an ensemble and threshold-based machine-learning model. Third, the authors evaluate the performance of LogIm on three open-source projects. On average, LogIm model improves the performance of baseline classifiers, J48, RF, and SVM, by 7.38%, 9.24%, and 4.6% for catch-blocks, and 12.11%, 14.95%, and 19.13% for if-blocks logging prediction.