OpenSZZ: A free, open-source, web-accessible implementation of the SZZ algorithm

Abstract

The accurate identification of defect-inducing commits representsa key problem for researchers interested in studying the naturalness of defects and defining defect prediction models. To tacklethis problem, software engineering researchers have relied on andproposed several implementations of the well-known SliwerskiZimmermann-Zeller (SZZ) algorithm. Despite its popularity andwide usage, no open-source, publicly available, and web-accessibleimplementation of the algorithm has been proposed so far. In thispaper, we prototype and make available one such implementationfor further use by practitioners and researchers alike. The evaluation of the proposed prototype showed competitive results and laysthe foundation for future work. This paper outlines our prototype,illustrating its usage and reporting on its evaluation in action.