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 | ||
| 07:507m Talk | 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 TechnologyDOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
| 07:574m Talk | 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, LuganoMedia Attached | ||
| 08:017m Talk | 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, ChinaPre-print Media Attached | ||
| 08:084m Talk | 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, CanadaPre-print Media Attached | ||
| 08:127m Talk | 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 UniversityDOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
| 08:194m Talk | Casdoc: Unobtrusive Explanations in Code Examples Tool Demonstration Mathieu Nassif McGill University, Zara Horlacher McGill University, Martin P. Robillard McGill UniversityPre-print Media Attached | ||
| 08:2317m Live Q&A | Q&A-Paper Session 14 Research | ||


