The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Recent studies indicate that multiple patches to software are found in a hefty portion of resolved bugs. It is also known that bugs that require multiple patches take longer to resolve, that their severity tends to be higher than the average and that they induce programmers to engage more in bug discussions.

This work is concerned with the ability of programmers to predict a bug will be of this sort, and in particular that it may require future patches and greater refixing effort at the time the bug is fixed at the first time. A mathematical model is developed for a retrospective analysis of bugs maintenance history. In this model we compute the impact of an array of bug properties on the likelihood that a specific bug is chosen, among all open bugs, to receive its first fix.