9.6 million links in source code comments: purpose, evolution, and decay

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dc.contributor.authorHata, H.
dc.contributor.authorTreude, C.
dc.contributor.authorKula, R.G.
dc.contributor.authorIshio, T.
dc.contributor.conferenceIEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (25 May 2019 - 31 May 2019 : Montreal, Canada)
dc.date.issued2019
dc.description.abstractLinks are an essential feature of the World Wide Web, and source code repositories are no exception. However, despite their many undisputed benefits, links can suffer from decay, insufficient versioning, and lack of bidirectional traceability. In this paper, we investigate the role of links contained in source code comments from these perspectives. We conducted a large-scale study of around 9.6 million links to establish their prevalence, and we used a mixed-methods approach to identify the links' targets, purposes, decay, and evolutionary aspects. We found that links are prevalent in source code repositories, that licenses, software homepages, and specifications are common types of link targets, and that links are often included to provide metadata or attribution. Links are rarely updated, but many link targets evolve. Almost 10% of the links included in source code comments are dead. We then submitted a batch of link-fixing pull requests to open source software repositories, resulting in most of our fixes being merged successfully. Our findings indicate that links in source code comments can indeed be fragile, and our work opens up avenues for future work to address these problems.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityHideaki Hata, Christoph Treude, Raula Gaikovina Kula, Takashi Ishio
dc.identifier.citationInternational Conference on Software Engineering, 2019, vol.2019-May, pp.1211-1221
dc.identifier.doi10.1109/ICSE.2019.00123
dc.identifier.isbn9781728108698
dc.identifier.issn0270-5257
dc.identifier.orcidTreude, C. [0000-0002-6919-2149]
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2440/128440
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherIEEE
dc.publisher.placeonline
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE180100153
dc.relation.ispartofseriesInternational Conference on Software Engineering
dc.rights© IEEE
dc.source.urihttps://doi.org/10.1109/icse.2019.00123
dc.title9.6 million links in source code comments: purpose, evolution, and decay
dc.typeConference paper
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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