Programmers’ Build Errors: A Case Study (at Google)
Venue
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (2014)
Publication Year
2014
Authors
Hyunmin Seo, Caitlin Sadowski, Sebastian Elbaum, Edward Aftandilian, Robert Bowdidge
BibTeX
Abstract
Building is an integral part of the software development process. However, little
is known about the errors occurring in this process. In this paper, we present an
empirical study of 26.6 million builds produced during a period of nine months by
thousands of developers. We describe the workflow through which those builds are
generated, and we analyze failure frequency, error types, and resolution efforts to
fix those errors. The results provide insights on how a large organization build
process works, and pinpoints errors for which further developer support would be
most effective.
