An insight into the technical debt-fix trade off in software backporting
Jarin Tasnim, Debasish Chakroborti, Chanchal K. Roy, Kevin A. Schneider
TL;DR
Backporting maintains older stable releases by applying fixes from newer releases, but this study shows that about $4.32\%$ of backport commits introduce new technical debt across 87 projects in Apache, Eclipse, and Python. Using SonarQube to detect debt-inducing commits and a set of heuristics to annotate when and why debt appears, the authors reveal ecosystem-specific patterns in debt density and timing, with Apache contributing the largest absolute TD and Python/Eclipse exhibiting higher debt density. Debt is dominated by maintainability/code smells, and its distribution over release phases varies by ecosystem: Apache debt concentrates in the Early phase, while Python and Eclipse debts peak in the Mid phase. Developer factors such as non-ownership and high workload increase the likelihood of debt, underscoring the need for TD-aware backporting governance and tooling tailored to each ecosystem to reduce long-term maintenance burden.
Abstract
Maintaining software is an ongoing process that stretches beyond the initial release. Stable software versions continuously evolve to fix bugs, add improvements, address security issues, and ensure compatibility. This ongoing support involves Backporting, which means taking a fix or update from a newer version and applying it to an older version of the same software. As software versions evolve, new technical debt can arise during backport maintenance activities. This study examines the technical debt involved in fixing 105,396 commits from 31,076 backport sources across 87 repositories in three software ecosystems (Apache, Eclipse, and Python). The goal is to identify when and why new technical debt arises during backporting in stable source code. Our results indicate that approximately 4.3% of backports introduce new technical debt. Apache contributes the most absolute instances, while Python and Eclipse exhibit nearly three times higher debt-to-commit ratios than Apache. Feature migrations make older Apache releases debt-prone in the early phase, whereas Python and Eclipse releases tend to accumulate technical debt mostly during the middle phase of their release cycles. Additionally, developers who are inexperienced, under high workloads, or non-owners are more likely to introduce technical debt during backporting.