  A Just-In-Time (JIT) defect prediction model is a classifier to predict if a
commit is defect-introducing. Recently, CC2Vec -- a deep learning approach for
Just-In-Time defect prediction -- has been proposed. However, CC2Vec requires
the whole dataset (i.e., training + testing) for model training, assuming that
all unlabelled testing datasets would be available beforehand, which does not
follow the key principles of just-in-time defect predictions. Our replication
study shows that, after excluding the testing dataset for model training, the
F-measure of CC2Vec is decreased by 38.5% for OpenStack and 45.7% for Qt,
highlighting the negative impact of excluding the testing dataset for
Just-In-Time defect prediction. In addition, CC2Vec cannot perform fine-grained
predictions at the line level (i.e., which lines are most risky for a given
commit).
  In this paper, we propose JITLine -- a Just-In-Time defect prediction
approach for predicting defect-introducing commits and identifying lines that
are associated with that defect-introducing commit (i.e., defective lines).
Through a case study of 37,524 commits from OpenStack and Qt, we find that our
JITLine approach is at least 26%-38% more accurate (F-measure), 17%-51% more
cost-effective (PCI@20%LOC), 70-100 times faster than the state-of-the-art
approaches (i.e., CC2Vec and DeepJIT) and the fine-grained predictions at the
line level by our approach are 133%-150% more accurate (Top-10 Accuracy) than
the baseline NLP approach. Therefore, our JITLine approach may help
practitioners to better prioritize defect-introducing commits and better
identify defective lines.

Software Engineering