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The Impact of Code Smells on Software Bugs: a Systematic Literature Review
Version 1
: Received: 1 October 2018 / Approved: 3 October 2018 / Online: 3 October 2018 (14:56:48 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Cairo, A.S.; Carneiro, G.F.; Monteiro, M.P. The Impact of Code Smells on Software Bugs: A Systematic Literature Review. Information 2018, 9, 273. Cairo, A.S.; Carneiro, G.F.; Monteiro, M.P. The Impact of Code Smells on Software Bugs: A Systematic Literature Review. Information 2018, 9, 273.
Abstract
Context: Code smells are associated with poor design and programming style that often degrades code quality and hampers code comprehensibility and maintainability. Goal: Identify reports from the literature that provide evidence of the influence of code smells on the occurrence of software bugs. Method: We conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to reach the~stated goal. Results: The SLR includes selected studies from July 2007 to September 2017 which analyzed the source code for open source and proprietary projects, as well, as several code smells and anti-patterns. The results of this SLR show that 24 code smells are more influential in the occurrence of bugs according to 16 studies. In contrast, three studies reported that at least 6 code smells are less influential in such occurrences. Evidence from the selected studies also point out tools, techniques and procedures applied to analyze the influence. Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SLR to target this goal. This study provides an up-to-date and structured understanding of the influence of code smells on the occurrence of software bugs based on findings systematically collected from a list of relevant references in the latest decade.
Keywords
code smells; code fault-proneness; bugs; software evolution
Subject
Computer Science and Mathematics, Computer Science
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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