Predicting Co-Changes between Functionality Specifications and Source Code in Behavior Driven Development
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Behavior Driven Development (BDD) is an agile approach that uses. feature files to describe the functionalities of a software system using natural language constructs (English-like phrases). Because of the English-like structure of. feature files, BDD specifications become an evolving documentation that helps all (even non-technical) stakeholders to understand and contribute to a software project. After specifying a. feature files, developers can use a BDD tool (e.g., Cucumber) to automatically generate test cases and implement the code of the specified functionality. However, maintaining traceability between. feature files and source code requires human efforts. Therefore,. feature files can be out-of-date, reducing the advantages of using BDD. Furthermore, existing research do not attempt to improve the traceability between. feature files and source code files. In this paper, we study the co-changes between. feature files and source code files to improve the traceability between. feature files and source code files. Due to the English-like syntax of. feature files, we use natural language processing to identify co-changes, with an accuracy of 79%. We study the characteristics of BDD co-changes and build random forest models to predict when a. feature files should be modified before committing a code change. The random forest model obtains an AUC of 0.77. The model can assist developers in identifying when a. feature files should be modified in code commits. Once the traceability is up-to-date, BDD developers can write test code more efficiently and keep the software documentation up-to-date.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.027 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".