| --- |
| license: cc-by-4.0 |
| task_categories: |
| - tabular-classification |
| tags: |
| - technical-debt |
| - code-quality |
| - software-engineering |
| size_categories: |
| - 1K<n<10K |
| --- |
| |
| # TechDebt ML Dataset |
|
|
| Features extracted from 22 public Python repositories, used to train a Random Forest |
| classifier that predicts technical debt risk per file. Companion dataset to the |
| [TechDebt ML](https://github.com/Chillipeeper1/techdebt-ml) project. |
|
|
| ## Content |
|
|
| Each row is one Python file. Columns include: |
|
|
| - **Code-quality metrics** (via [Radon](https://radon.readthedocs.io/)): `loc`, `sloc`, |
| `comment_ratio`, `blank_ratio`, `cyclomatic_complexity`, `max_complexity`, |
| `maintainability_index`, `halstead_effort`, `num_functions`, `avg_function_len` |
| - **Structural metrics** (via Python's `ast`): `dependency_count`, `max_nesting_depth`, |
| `is_tested` |
| - **Git activity** (normalized relative to each file's own repo — see Preprocessing below): |
| `commit_count`, `author_count`, `churn_rate`, `days_since_change` |
| - **Metadata**: `file name`, `repo` |
| - **`label`**: 1 if the file had 2+ bug-fix commits in its git history, 0 otherwise |
| - `bug_fix_commits`, `refactor_commits`: kept for reference only — **do not use these as |
| model features**, they were excluded from training due to label leakage (see below) |
|
|
| 2,503 rows total. Label balance: 62% (0) / 38% (1). |
|
|
| ## Preprocessing applied |
|
|
| Git-activity features (`commit_count`, `author_count`, `churn_rate`, `days_since_change`) |
| were normalized relative to each file's own repository (divided by that repo's median), |
| since their absolute values are not comparable across repos with different overall |
| activity levels. |
|
|
| Three columns were additionally clipped at the 99th percentile to control extreme outliers: |
| - `max_complexity`: clipped at 42.98 |
| - `churn_rate`: clipped at 27.05 |
| - `commit_count`: clipped at 20.97 |
|
|
| ## Known limitations |
|
|
| This dataset inherits every limitation already documented in the source project: |
|
|
| - **Label leakage (resolved):** an early version leaked the label into the features via |
| `bug_fix_commits`/`refactor_commits`. [Details](https://github.com/Chillipeeper1/techdebt-ml/blob/main/docs/descisions/001-data-leakage.md) |
| - **No temporal split:** features and label are both computed from a file's entire git |
| history, without a strict past-predicts-future split. [Details](https://github.com/Chillipeeper1/techdebt-ml/blob/main/docs/descisions/002-limitations-temporal-cut.md) |
| - **Git-activity bias (partially mitigated):** earlier model versions over-relied on commit |
| and author counts rather than actual code complexity. Relative normalization improved |
| this substantially but did not fully resolve it. [Details](https://github.com/Chillipeeper1/techdebt-ml/blob/main/docs/descisions/003-model-bias-git-activity.md) |
| - **Small-sample repos:** three of the 22 source repos have very few files (`flow`: 2, |
| `Discord-OTP-Forcer`: 11, `ibet-Network`: 12). Per-repo medians used for git-activity |
| normalization are less reliable for these repos. They were kept rather than excluded, |
| given the small number of files affected. |
| - **Median computed pre-split:** per-repo medians for normalization were computed over the |
| full dataset (train + test combined) rather than fit only on the training partition. |
| Likely low impact, but a known methodological gap. |
|
|
| ## Source repositories |
|
|
| See [`source_repos.csv`](./source_repos.csv) for the full list of the 22 public GitHub |
| repositories this dataset was derived from, with their URLs. Only aggregate numeric metrics |
| are included here — no source code, commit messages, or author names are redistributed. |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| The derived metrics in this dataset are released under CC-BY 4.0. The original source code |
| of each repository remains under its own respective license. |
|
|
