Question

I am currently working on a senior project on software engineering and implementing a defect prediction mechanism in software projects which use version control system.

Therefore, i want to ask the community about their commit message procedures.

Which words in the commit messages may infer “bug fixed” meaning? So that, i can understand that the modified files in that revision was in a buggy state?

Answer 1

May I suggest that, rather than brainstorm a list, you set up a Bayesian filter that allows you to flag a bunch of commits as bug fixes or not, and train the system to recognize the characteristics that bug fixes have in common. You are sure to come up with some characteristics that none of us could have predicted.

However, I’ll propose a few categories of action words to look for:

One is words that indicate what you did, such as “corrected”, “fixed”, “tweaked”.
Another is words that indicate what was wrong, such as “problem”, “bug”, “issue”.
Another is words that indicate what your fix accomplished, such as “prevent”, “ensure”, “stop”, “allow”.

“Corrected an issue with string sorting. This will prevent strings that start with spaces from incorrectly appearing at the top of the list.”