FSE 2025
Mon 23 - Fri 27 June 2025 Trondheim, Norway
co-located with ISSTA 2025
Tue 24 Jun 2025 10:40 - 11:00 at Aurora A - Code Review, Build, and Release Chair(s): Peter Rigby

Code reviews are central for software quality assurance. Ideally, reviewers should explain their feedback to enable authors of code changes to understand the feedback and act accordingly. Different developers might need different explanations in different contexts. Therefore, assisting this process first requires understanding the types of explanations reviewers usually provide. The goal of this paper is to study the types of explanations used in code reviews and explore the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs), specifically ChatGPT, in generating these specific types. We extracted 793 code review comments from Gerrit and manually labeled them based on whether they contained a suggestion, an explanation, or both. Our analysis shows that 42% of comments only include suggestions without explanations. We categorized the explanations into seven distinct types including rule or principle, similar examples, and future implications. When measuring their prevalence, we observed that some explanations are used differently by novice and experienced reviewers. Our manual evaluation shows that, when the explanation type is specified, ChatGPT can correctly generate the explanation in 88 out of 90 cases. This foundational work highlights the potential for future automation in code reviews, which can assist developers in sharing and obtaining different types of explanations as needed, thereby reducing back-and-forth communication.

Tue 24 Jun

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

10:30 - 12:20
Code Review, Build, and ReleaseIdeas, Visions and Reflections / Industry Papers / Demonstrations / Research Papers / Journal First at Aurora A
Chair(s): Peter Rigby Concordia University; Meta
10:30
10m
Talk
From Overload to Insight: Bridging Code Search and Code Review with LLMs
Ideas, Visions and Reflections
Nikitha Rao Carnegie Mellon University, Bogdan Vasilescu Carnegie Mellon University, Reid Holmes University of British Columbia
10:40
20m
Talk
Explaining Explanations: An Empirical Study of Explanations in Code Reviews
Journal First
Ratnadira Widyasari Singapore Management University, Singapore, Ting Zhang Singapore Management University, Abir Bouraffa University of Hamburg, Walid Maalej University of Hamburg, David Lo Singapore Management University
11:00
10m
Talk
Support, Not Automation: Towards AI-supported Code Review for Code Quality and Beyond
Ideas, Visions and Reflections
Lo Heander Lund University, Emma Söderberg Lund University, Christofer Rydenfält Lund University
11:10
20m
Talk
BitsAI-CR: Automated Code Review via LLM in Practice
Industry Papers
Tao Sun Beihang University, Jian Xu ByteDance, Yuanpeng Li ByteDance, Zhao Yan ByteDance, Ge Zhang ByteDance, Lintao Xie ByteDance, Lu Geng ByteDance, Zheng Wang University of Leeds, Yueyan Chen ByteDance, Qin Lin ByteDance, Wenbo Duan ByteDance, Kaixin Sui ByteDance, Yuanshuo Zhu ByteDance
11:30
10m
Talk
Visualising Developer Interactions in Code Reviews
Demonstrations
Daniel Bee Royal Holloway, University of London, DongGyun Han Royal Holloway, University of London
11:40
20m
Talk
CXXCrafter: An LLM-Based Agent for Automated C/C++ Open Source Software Building
Research Papers
Zhengmin Yu Fudan University, Yuan Zhang Fudan University, Ming Wen Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Yinan Nie Fudan University, Zhang Wenhui Fudan University, Min Yang Fudan University
DOI
12:00
20m
Talk
SmartNote: An LLM-Powered, Personalised Release Note Generator That Just Works
Research Papers
Farbod Daneshyan Peking University, Runzhi He Peking University, Jianyu Wu Peking University, Minghui Zhou Peking University
DOI

Information for Participants
Tue 24 Jun 2025 10:30 - 12:20 at Aurora A - Code Review, Build, and Release Chair(s): Peter Rigby
Info for room Aurora A:

Aurora A is the first room in the Aurora wing.

When facing the main Cosmos Hall, access to the Aurora wing is on the right, close to the side entrance of the hotel.

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