The Perceptions of Software Engineers Concerning the Utilization of Bots in the OSS Development Process: An Exploratory Survey

TL;DR

This paper explores software engineers' perceptions of bots in OSS development, revealing their widespread use, benefits in productivity, and the need for more intelligent and integrated bot functionalities.

Contribution

It provides new insights into engineers' views on bot utility, challenges, and desired improvements in open source software development.

Findings

Bots are used across multiple development phases.

Current bots lack sufficient intelligence.

Engineers desire more advanced functionalities and integrations.

Abstract

Software bots, extensively adopted by Open Source Software (OSS) projects, support developers across several activities, from automating predefined tasks to generating code that aids software engineers. However, with the growing prominence of bots, questions have emerged regarding the extension to which they truly assist or hinder software engineers in their routine tasks. To address this, an exploratory survey was conducted with 37 software engineers to gather insights into their views on the use of bots within the software development process. The findings suggest that bots are present across multiple phases of the software development lifecycle, providing daily support to professionals by enhancing productivity and facilitating task automation. Respondents stated that current bots are not sufficiently intelligent and raised new challenges and enhancements to aid bot designers in developing additional functionalities and integrations.