TD Classifier: Automatic Identification of Java Classes with High Technical Debt

Abstract

To date, the identification and quantification of Technical Debt (TD) rely heavily on a few sophisticated tools that check for violations of certain predefined rules, usually through static analysis. Different tools result in divergent TD estimates calling into question the reliability of findings derived by a single tool. To alleviate this issue, we present a tool that employs machine learning on a dataset built upon the convergence of three widely-adopted TD Assessment tools to automatically assess the class-level TD for any arbitrary Java project. The proposed tool is able to classify software classes as high-TD or not, by synthesizing source code and repository ac-tivity information retrieved by employing four popular open source analyzers. The classification results are combined with proper vi-sualization techniques, to enable the identification of classes that are more likely to be problematic. To demonstrate the proposed tool and evaluate its usefulness, a case study is conducted based on a real-world open-source software project. The proposed tool is expected to facilitate TD management activities and enable fur-ther experimentation through its use in an academic or industrial setting. Video: https://youtu.be/umgXU8u7lIA Running Instance: http://160.40.52.130:3000/tdclassifier Source Code: https://gitlab.seis.iti.gr/root/td-classifier.git