title: "Linux Kernel Developer Responses to Static Analysis Bug Reports"
authors: Philip J. Guo and Dawson Engler
venue: USENIX Annual Technical Conference, short paper
year: 2009

tweet: Developers like to first investigate easier-to-fix bug reports that affect newer and smaller files

abstract: >
  We present a study of how Linux
  kernel developers respond to bug reports issued by a static analysis
  tool. We found that developers prefer to triage reports in younger,
  smaller, and more actively-maintained files, first address easy-to-fix
  bugs and defer difficult (but possibly critical) bugs, and triage bugs
  in batches rather than individually.  Also, although automated tools
  cannot find many types of bugs, they can be effective at directing
  developers attentions towards parts of the codebase that contain up to
  3X more user-reported bugs.<br/><br/>Our insights into developer
  attitudes towards static analysis tools allow us to make suggestions for
  improving their usability and effectiveness. We feel that it could be
  effective to run static analysis tools continuously while programming
  and before committing code, to rank reports so that those most likely to
  be triaged are shown to developers first, to show the easiest reports to
  new developers, to perform deeper analysis on more actively-maintained
  code, and to use reports as indirect indicators of code quality and
  importance.

bibtex: >
  @inproceedings{GuoUsenix2009,
   author = {Guo, Philip J. and Engler, Dawson},
   title = {Linux Kernel Developer Responses to Static Analysis Bug Reports},
   booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2009 USENIX Annual Technical Conference},
   series = {USENIX'09},
   year = {2009},
   location = {San Diego, California},
   url = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1855807.1855829},
   acmid = {1855829},
   publisher = {USENIX Association},
   address = {Berkeley, CA, USA},
  }