From Transient Information to Persistent Documentation: Enhancing Software Documentation

Developers usually need to use different kinds of tools in the software development process, e.g., version control systems, code review tools, and bug or issue tracking systems. Some of those tools provide an enhanced approach for developers to communicate, i.e., discussions are recorded in the communication feature of those tools. There is important information, i.e., discussions and decisions, registered by those tools which are not propagated to the project documentation: the transient information. Thus, this work investigates how to improve the software documentation by making such transient important information into persistent documentation as source code comments. The results are relevant because they will aid the comprehension of the source code not only during the development process, but also in code reviews.