论文标题
在软件存储库文档中检测过时的代码元素参考
Detecting Outdated Code Element References in Software Repository Documentation
论文作者
论文摘要
过时的文档是软件开发，防止有效使用软件以及误导用户和开发人员的普遍问题。我们认为，文档如此容易变得不同步的可能原因是，开发人员不知道其源代码修改何时使文档过时。确保文档始终与源代码同步，尤其是对于大型代码库而言。为了解决这种情况，我们提出了一种方法，该方法可以自动检测到所有源代码实例删除后在文档中生存的代码元素引用。在这项工作中，我们分析了3,000多个GitHub项目，发现大多数项目在其历史上的某个时候至少包含一个过时的代码元素参考。我们将GitHub问题提交给现实世界项目，其中包含我们方法检测到的过时的参考，其中一些已经导致了文档修复。作为将文档保留在软件存储库中的主动性，我们已使开发人员可以实施实施，以扫描其GitHub项目以获取过时的代码元素参考。
Outdated documentation is a pervasive problem in software development, preventing effective use of software, and misleading users and developers alike. We posit that one possible reason why documentation becomes out of sync so easily is that developers are unaware of when their source code modifications render the documentation obsolete. Ensuring that the documentation is always in sync with the source code takes considerable effort, especially for large codebases. To address this situation, we propose an approach that can automatically detect code element references that survive in the documentation after all source code instances have been deleted. In this work, we analysed over 3,000 GitHub projects and found that most projects contain at least one outdated code element reference at some point in their history. We submitted GitHub issues to real-world projects containing outdated references detected by our approach, some of which have already led to documentation fixes. As an initiative toward keeping documentation in software repositories up-to-date, we have made our implementation available for developers to scan their GitHub projects for outdated code element references.
