Bug Priority Change: An Empirical Study on Apache Projects

23 Pages Posted: 7 Sep 2023

See all articles by Zengyang Li

Zengyang Li

Central China Normal University

Guangzong Cai

Central China Normal University

Qinyi Yu

Central China Normal University

Peng Liang

Wuhan University

Ran Mo

Central China Normal University

Hui Liu

Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Abstract

In issue tracking systems, each bug is assigned a priority (e.g., Blocker and Minor in JIRA), which indicates the urgency level of the bug. In this sense, bug priority plays an important role in release planning and task assignment of a software project. According to the data extracted from JIRA deployed by Apache, a proportion of bugs in each project underwent priority changes after such bugs were reported, which brings uncertainty to release planning. However, there is a lack of in-depth investigation on the phenomenon of bug priority changes, which impedes the optimization of decision making in release planning. Thus, we conducted a quantitative empirical study on bugs with priority changes in 32 Apache projects. The results show that: 8.3% of the bugs in the projects underwent priority changes; a half of bug priority changes happened before bugs were handled; 87.9% of the bugs with priority changes underwent only one priority change and a higher priority has a greater probability to undergo priority change; bugs that require bug-fixing changes of higher complexity or that have more comments are likely to undergo priority changes;  priorities of bugs reported or allocated by a few specific participants are more likely to be modified.

Keywords: Bug Priority Change, Open Source Software, empirical study

Suggested Citation

Li, Zengyang and Cai, Guangzong and Yu, Qinyi and Liang, Peng and Mo, Ran and Liu, Hui, Bug Priority Change: An Empirical Study on Apache Projects. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4564657 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4564657

Zengyang Li

Central China Normal University ( email )

152 Luoyu Road
Wuhan, 430079
China

Guangzong Cai

Central China Normal University ( email )

152 Luoyu Road
Wuhan, 430079
China

Qinyi Yu

Central China Normal University ( email )

152 Luoyu Road
Wuhan, 430079
China

Peng Liang (Contact Author)

Wuhan University ( email )

Wuhan
China

Ran Mo

Central China Normal University ( email )

152 Luoyu Road
Wuhan, 430079
China

Hui Liu

Huazhong University of Science and Technology ( email )

1037 Luoyu Rd
Wuhan, 430074
China

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