On Association of Code Change Types and CI Build Failures in Software Repositories

The software development process heavily relies on building systems, which are prone to frequent failures, particularly in continuous integration (CI) environments. In this study, we investigated the impact of major change types, both individually and collectively, on CI build failure rates. Specifically, we compared the contribution of changes stemming from different underlying reasons, such as functional requirement additions, bug fixes, enhancements, and dependency removals. Preliminary results revealed that adding new functionalities had a lower impact on CI failures compared to maintenance changes. Furthermore, we analyzed the characteristics of the ultimate changes to identify common features among the change types that contributed to failures. Subsequently, utilizing these identified features, we developed a mathematical model to predict failures based on the characteristics of the triggering change type. The trained model demonstrated a commendable performance, accurately identifying potential failure-inducing changes in the dataset, with a recall of 78% and precision of 53%. This research sheds light on the relationship between change types and CI build failures, highlighting the significance of maintenance changes in driving failures. The identification of common features among failure- contributing change types aids in understanding failure patterns and supports the development of preventive measures. The predictive model offers a practical tool for early detection and mitigation of potential failures, contributing to improved software development processes and the adoption of effective CI practices.