Analysing Bug Fix Characteristics Across Projects: Investigating The Impact of Priority, Complexity, And Resolution Time

Abstract

Understanding how bug fix characteristics such as priority, complexity, and resolution time vary across different projects is crucial for improving software maintenance strategies. This research explores the impact of priority levels on resolution time, investigates whether different bug categories exhibit distinct resolution times, and analyzes the relationship between bug complexity (e.g., number of commits, lines of code changed) and resolution time. Additionally, a comparison is made between the bug resolution processes across open-source projects such as Cassandra, HBase, and Hive. Findings indicate that Critical and Minor priority bugs have the longest resolution times, while Blocker and Trivial bugs are resolved more quickly. Bug categories significantly affect resolution times, and while larger code changes exhibit a weak correlation with longer resolution times, the number of commits has little to no impact. Furthermore, Hive exhibits longer median resolution times compared to HBase, suggesting variations in project-specific bug resolution approaches. These insights can help software developers and project managers optimize their bug resolution