Empirical comparison of three metrics suites for fault prediction in packages of object-oriented systems: A case study of Eclipse

Packages are important high-level organizational units for large object-oriented systems. Package-level metrics characterize the attributes of packages such as size, complexity, and coupling. There is a need for empirical evidence to support the collection of these metrics and using them as early indicators of some important external software quality attributes. In this paper, three suites of package-level metrics (Martin, MOOD and CK) are evaluated and compared empirically in predicting the number of pre-release faults and the number of post-release faults in packages. Eclipse, one of the largest open source systems, is used as a case study. The results indicate that the prediction models that are based on Martin suite are more accurate than those that are based on MOOD and CK suites across releases of Eclipse.

► We empirically compared three suites of package-level metrics (Martin, MOOD and CK).
► We evaluated their accuracy in fault prediction in packages of Eclipse system.
► Seven prediction models were built using different combinations of the three suites.
► Prediction models that include subset of Martin metrics outperform the others.