Examining the evolution of code comments in PostgreSQL

Submitted by msquire on Thu, 2011-04-14 15:54

Title	Examining the evolution of code comments in PostgreSQL
Publication Type	Conference Paper
Year of Publication	2006
Authors	Jiang, ZM, Hassan, AE
Secondary Title	Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Mining software repositories
Pagination	179–180
Publisher	ACM
Place Published	New York, NY, USA
ISBN Number	1-59593-397-2
Keywords	code comments, comments, cvs, evolution, functions, maintenance, mining challenge, msr challenge, postgresql, software evolution, software maintenance, source code
Abstract	It is common, especially in large software systems, for developers to change code without updating its associated comments due to their unfamiliarity with the code or due to time constraints. This is a potential problem since outdated comments may confuse or mislead developers who perform future development. Using data recovered from CVS, we study the evolution of code comments in the PostgreSQL project. Our study reveals that over time the percentage of commented functions remains constant except for early fluctuation due to the commenting style of a particular active developer.
URL	http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1137983.1138030
DOI	10.1145/1137983.1138030
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