Tools and Datasets for Mining Libre Software Repositories

2. First Steps Before The Analysis

There are some steps to be walked before the analysis of data from libre software projects can be started. First of all, the relevant data sources have to be identified. After that, the data has to be retrieved from the corresponding data repositories. Only then, the researcher can really start to analyze the data.

It is important to notice that there may be several ways of accessing the same kind of data, depending on the project and how it handles it. There are several different tools and systems that projects use, and they also have different usage conventions. For instance, the use of tags, comments, among others, may differ from one project to another, and can be of paramount importance to tell bugs appart from new feature requests in a BTS. The complexity and feasibility of both identification and retrieval depend, therefore, of the project. Figure 1 shows a diagram with all the steps that have to be accomplished for any source considered in the studies.

Figure 1.

Whole process: from identification of the data sources to analysis of the data