What if a development bot could help you detect software bugs automatically, then provide probable causes for each issue along with fixes suggestions? Identifying patterns in past bugs to better intercept new bugs might save significant debugging time and cost to software development teams.
At Ubisoft La Forge Research Lab in Montreal, Technical Architect Mathieu Nayrolles collaborates on such a learning bot with Concordia University expert Abdelwahab Hamou-Lhadj at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Using the innovative CLEVER approach, they can detect commits that are likely to introduce bugs, with an average of 79.10% precision and a 65.61% recall.
CLEVER combines code metrics, clone detection techniques, and project dependency analysis to detect risky commits within and across projects. CLEVER operates at commit-time, before the commits reach the central code repository. Also, because it relies on code comparison, CLEVER does not only detect risky commits but also makes recommendations to developers on how to fix them.
You can find more details on the risky commit detector online:
- Mathieu Nayrolles and Abdelwahab Hamou-Lhadj ICSE/Mining Software Repositories 2018 article: "CLEVER: Combining Code Metrics with Clone Detection for Just-In-Time Fault Prevention and Resolution in Large Industrial Projects"
- Ubisoft Commit Assistant article and video