Categorizing the Content of GitHub README FilesJournal-First
README files play an essential role in shaping a developer’s first impression of a software repository and in documenting the software project that the repository hosts. Yet, we lack a systematic understanding of the content of a typical README file as well as tools that can process these files automatically. To close this gap, we conduct a qualitative study involving the manual annotation of 4,226 README file sections from 393 randomly sampled GitHub repositories and we design and evaluate a classifier and a set of features that can categorize these sections automatically. We find that information discussing the ‘What’ and ‘How’ of a repository is very common, while many README files lack information regarding the purpose and status of a repository. Our multi-label classifier which can predict eight different categories achieves an F1 score of 0.746. To evaluate the usefulness of the classification, we used the automatically determined classes to label sections in GitHub README files using badges and showed files with and without these badges to twenty software professionals. The majority of participants perceived the automated labeling of sections based on our classifier to ease information discovery. This work enables the owners of software repositories to improve the quality of their documentation and it has the potential to make it easier for the software development community to discover relevant information in GitHub README files.
Fri 31 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
16:00 - 17:20 | Software DocumentationTechnical Track / Papers / Software Engineering in Practice / Journal-First Papers at Centre-Ville Chair(s): Bonita Sharif University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA | ||
16:00 20mTalk | Web Feature Deprecation: A Case Study for ChromeSEIPIndustry Program Software Engineering in Practice Ariana Mirian University of California San Diego, Nikunj Bhagat Google, Caitlin Sadowski , Adriana Porter Felt Google, Stefan Savage University of California San Diego, Geoffrey M. Voelker University of California San Diego | ||
16:20 20mTalk | Software Documentation Issues UnveiledTechnical TrackIndustry Program Technical Track Emad Aghajani Software Institute, USI - Lugano, Switzerland, Csaba Nagy Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Olga Lucero Vega-Marquez Universidad de los Andes, Universidad de los Llanos, Mario Linares-Vásquez Systems and Computing Engineering Department , Universidad de los Andes , Bogotá, Colombia , Laura Moreno Colorado State University, Gabriele Bavota Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Michele Lanza Universita della Svizzera italiana (USI) Pre-print | ||
16:40 20mTalk | 9.6 Million Links in Source Code Comments: Purpose, Evolution, and DecayTechnical Track Technical Track Hideaki Hata Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Christoph Treude The University of Adelaide, Raula Gaikovina Kula NAIST, Takashi Ishio Nara Institute of Science and Technology DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
17:00 10mTalk | Categorizing the Content of GitHub README FilesJournal-First Journal-First Papers Gede Artha Azriadi Prana Singapore Management University, Christoph Treude The University of Adelaide, Ferdian Thung , Thushari Atapattu The University of Adelaide, David Lo Singapore Management University Link to publication DOI Pre-print | ||
17:10 10mTalk | Discussion Period Papers |