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Cliff Walls: Threats to Validity in Empirical Studies of Open Source Forges

Artifact-based research provides a mechanism whereby researchers may study the creation of software yet avoid many of the difficulties of direct observation and experimentation. Open source software forges are of great value to the software researcher, because they expose many of the artifacts of software development. However, many challenges affect the quality of artifact-based studies, especially those studies examining software evolution. This thesis addresses one of these threats: the presence of very large commits, which we refer to as "Cliff Walls." Cliff walls are a threat to studies of software evolution because they do not appear to represent incremental development. In this thesis we demonstrate the existence of cliff walls in open source software projects and discuss the threats they present. We also seek to identify key causes of these monolithic commits, and begin to explore ways that researchers can mitigate the threats of cliff walls.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-4510
Date27 February 2013
CreatorsPratt, Landon James
PublisherBYU ScholarsArchive
Source SetsBrigham Young University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
Rightshttp://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

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