A Reconfiguration Method of Bug Thread Hierarchy by Similarities Weighted with Dependent Relationships

Abstract

This paper addresses a problem to reconfigure a bug thread hierarchy in bug tracking systems. The bug thread hierarchy consists of dozens of bug threads that have dependent relationships each other, and the hierarchy is reconfigured when a recent bug thread is posted. Not only bug threads that have dependent relationships with the recent bug threads but also their dependent targets or sources are similar to the recent bug thread. In our proposed method, similarities with dependent targets and dependent sources are weighted to the similarity with the bug thread, and the bug thread that has the highest weighted similarity is identified to have a dependent relationship with a recent bug thread. The dependent direction is decided by the similarity with dependent targets and sources. As a result of the experiment, the hierarchy of the bug threads is reconfigured at a correct rate of 81%.