18 million links in commit messages: purpose, evolution, and decay

• Main Authors: XIAO, Tao, BALTES, Sebastian, HATA, Hideaki, TREUDE, Christoph, KULA, Raula, ISHIO, Takashi, MATSUMOTO, Kenichi
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Commit messages; Software documentation; Link sharing; Link decay; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8781; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9784/viewcontent/18million.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Commit messages contain diverse and valuable types of knowledge in all aspects of software maintenance and evolution. Links are an example of such knowledge. Previous work on “9.6 million links in source code comments” showed that links are prone to decay, become outdated, and lack bidirectional tra...