Demystifying Software Release Note Issues on GitHub
Release notes (RNs) summarize main changes between two consecutive software versions and serve as a central source of information when users upgrade software. While producing high quality RNs can be hard and poses a variety of challenges to developers, a comprehensive empirical understanding on these challenges is still lacking. In this paper, we bridge this knowledge gap by manually analyzing 1731 latest GitHub issues to build a comprehensive taxonomy of RN issues with four dimensions:\textit{Content}, \textit{Presentation}, \textit{Accessibility}, and \textit{Production}. Among these issues, nearly half (48.47%) of them focus on Production; \textit{Content}, \textit{Accessibility}, and \textit{Presentation} take 25.61%, and 17.65%, and 8.27%, respectively. We find that: 1) RN producers are more likely to miss information than to include incorrect information, especially for breaking changes; 2) improper layout may bury important information leading to user confusion; 3) many users find RNs inaccessible due to link deterioration, lack of notification, and obfuscate RN locations; 4) automating and regulating RN production remain challenging despite the great needs of RN producers. Our taxonomy can serve as a roadmap to improve RN production in practice and also reveal interesting future research directions.
Tue 17 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
07:50 - 08:40 | Session 14: DocumentationResearch / Early Research Achievements (ERA) / Tool Demonstration at ICPC room Chair(s): Fiorella Zampetti University of Sannio, Italy | ||
07:50 7mTalk | Fine-Grained Code-Comment Semantic Interaction Analysis Research Mingyang Geng National University of Defense Technology, Shangwen Wang National University of Defense Technology, Dezun Dong NUDT, Shanzhi Gu Hunan Huishiwei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., Fang Peng University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Weijian Ruan Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Liao Xiangke National University of Defense Technology DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
07:57 4mTalk | Using Discord Conversations as Program Comprehension Aid Early Research Achievements (ERA) Marco Raglianti Software Institute - USI, Lugano, Csaba Nagy Software Institute - USI, Lugano, Roberto Minelli Software Institute - USI, Lugano, Michele Lanza Software Institute - USI, Lugano Media Attached | ||
08:01 7mTalk | Demystifying Software Release Note Issues on GitHub Research Jianyu Wu Peking University, Hao He Peking University, Wenxin Xiao School of Computer Science, Peking University, Kai Gao University of Science and Technology Beijing, Minghui Zhou Peking University, China Pre-print Media Attached | ||
08:08 4mTalk | A First Look at Duplicate and Near-duplicate Self-admitted Technical Debt Comments Early Research Achievements (ERA) Jerin Yasmin Queen's University, Canada, Mohammad Sadegh Sheikhaei Queen's University, Yuan Tian Queens University, Kingston, Canada Pre-print Media Attached | ||
08:12 7mTalk | HatCUP: Hybrid Analysis and Attention based Just-In-Time Comment Updating Research Hongquan Zhu State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Xincheng He State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Lei Xu State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
08:19 4mTalk | Casdoc: Unobtrusive Explanations in Code Examples Tool Demonstration Mathieu Nassif McGill University, Zara Horlacher McGill University, Martin P. Robillard McGill University Pre-print Media Attached | ||
08:23 17mLive Q&A | Q&A-Paper Session 14 Research |