[ICPC22] Demystifying Software Release Note Issues on GitHub —— Dataset

Release notes (RNs) summarize main changes between two consecutive software versions and serve as a central source of information when users upgrade software. While producing high quality RNs can be hard and poses a variety of challenges to developers, a comprehensive empirical understanding on these challenges is still lacking. In this paper, we bridge this knowledge gap by manually analyzing 1,731 latest GitHub issues to build a comprehensive taxonomy of RN issues with four dimensions: Content, Presentation, Accessibility, and Production. Among these issues, nearly half (48.47%) of them focus on Production; Content, Accessibility, and Presentation take 25.61%, 17.65%, and 8.27%, respectively. We find that: 1) RN producers are more likely to miss information than to include incorrect information, especially for breaking changes; 2) improper layout may bury important information and confuse users; 3) many users find RNs inaccessible due to link deterioration, lack of notification, and obfuscate RN locations; 4) automating and regulating RN production is challenging despite producers’ great needs. Our taxonomy pictures a roadmap to improve RN production in practice and reveals interesting future research directions.

发布说明（Release Notes，RNs）用于归纳两个连续软件版本间的核心变更，同时为用户升级软件提供关键信息参考。尽管生成高质量的发布说明对开发者而言兼具难度与多重挑战，但当前学界与业界对这些挑战仍缺乏全面的实证认知。本文通过手动分析1731个最新的GitHub议题，构建了涵盖内容、呈现、可访问性与生成四大维度的发布说明相关问题综合分类体系，以此填补这一研究空白。在上述问题中，近半数（48.47%）聚焦于生成环节；内容、可访问性与呈现维度的占比分别为25.61%、17.65%与8.27%。本研究得出以下结论：其一，相较于录入错误信息，发布说明编写者更易遗漏关键信息，针对破坏性变更（breaking changes）的场景尤为突出；其二，不合理的版面布局可能遮蔽核心信息，进而误导用户；其三，诸多用户反馈发布说明可访问性不佳，具体表现为链接失效、缺乏通知推送，以及发布说明的位置难以查找；其四，尽管发布说明编写者存在强烈的自动化与规范化生成需求，但实现自动化、规范化的发布说明生成流程仍颇具挑战。本研究所构建的分类体系为实际场景中优化发布说明生成工作绘制了清晰路线图，同时也揭示了若干富有价值的未来研究方向。