In this study we present how some version control history based metrics affect maintainability of the source code. These metrics cover intensity of modifications, code ownership and code aging. We determine the order of source files based on each analyzed metrics, and compare it with their maintainability based order. As a cross-check we perform a comparison test with post-release defects as well. We performed the analysis on 14 versions of 4 well-known open source software systems. The results show high correlation between the version control metrics and relative maintainability indexes, in each case. The comparison with post-release defects also support the results in most of the cases.
BibTeX:
@InProceedings{FHL15,
author = {Farag{\'o}, Csaba and Heged{\H{u}}s, P{\'e}ter and Lad{\'a}nyi, Gergely and Ferenc, Rudolf},
title = {Impact of Version History Metrics on Maintainability},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Advanced Software Engineering \& Its Applications (ASEA 2015)},
year = {2015},
pages = {30--35},
address = {Jeju Island, Korea},
month = nov,
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
doi = {10.1109/ASEA.2015.14},
keywords = {code aging, version control history metrics, source code maintainability, code churn, code ownership},
url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7433065/},
}