Which code construct metrics are symptoms of post release failures?

Software metrics, such as code complexity metrics and code churn metrics, are used to predict failures. In this paper we study a specific set of metrics called code construct metrics and relate them to post release failures. We use the values of the code construct metrics for each file to characterize that file. We analyze the code construct metrics along with the post release failure data on the files (that splits the files into two classes: files with post release failures and files without post release failures). In our analysis we compare a file with post release failure to a set of files without post release failures, that have similar characteristics. In our comparison we identify which code construct metric, more often than the others, differs the most between these two classes of files. The goal of our research is to find out which code construct metrics can perhaps be used as symptoms of post release failures. In this paper we analyzed the code construct metrics of Eclipse 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0. Our results indicate that MethodInvocation, QualifiedName, and SimpleName, are the code constructs that differentiates the two classes of files the most and hence are the key symptoms/indicators of a file with post release failures in these versions of Eclipse.