Understanding Resolution of Multi-Language Bugs: An Empirical Study on Apache Projects

Background: In modern software systems, more and more systems are written in multiple programming languages (PLs). There is no comprehensive investigation on the phenomenon of multi-programming-language (MPL) bugs, which resolution involves source files written in multiple PLs. Aim: This work investigated the characteristics of bug resolution in MPL software systems and explored the reasons why bug resolution involves multiple PLs. Method: We conducted an empirical study on 54 MPL projects selected from 655 Apache OSS projects, of which 66,932 bugs were analyzed. Results: (1) the percentage of MPL bugs (MPLBs) in the selected projects ranges from 0.17% to 42.26%, and the percentage of MPLBs for all projects as a whole is 10.01%; (2) 95.0% and 4.5% of all the MPLBs involve source files written in 2 and 3 PLs, respectively; (3) the change complexity resolution characteristics of MPLBs tend to be higher than those of single-programming-language bugs (SPLBs); (4) the open time for MPLBs is 19.52% to 529.57% significantly longer than SPLBs regarding 9 PL combinations; (5) the reopen rate of bugs involving the PL combination of JavaScript and Python reaches 20.66%; (6) we found 6 causes why the bug resolution involves multiple PLs and identified 5 cross-language calling mechanisms. Conclusion: MPLBs are related to increased development difficulty.