Deep Learning-Based Software Defect Prediction via Semantic Key Features of Source Code—Systematic Survey

Software defect prediction (SDP) methodology could enhance software’s reliability through predicting any suspicious defects in its source code. However, developing defect prediction models is a difficult task, as has been demonstrated recently. Several research techniques have been proposed over time to predict source code defects. However, most of the previous studies focus on conventional feature extraction and modeling. Such traditional methodologies often fail to find the contextual information of the source code files, which is necessary for building reliable prediction deep learning models. Alternatively, the semantic feature strategies of defect prediction have recently evolved and developed. Such strategies could automatically extract the contextual information from the source code files and use them to directly predict the suspicious defects. In this study, a comprehensive survey is conducted to systematically show recent software defect prediction techniques based on the source code’s key features. The most recent studies on this topic are critically reviewed through analyzing the semantic feature methods based on the source codes, the domain’s critical problems and challenges are described, and the recent and current progress in this domain are discussed. Such a comprehensive survey could enable research communities to identify the current challenges and future research directions. An in-depth literature review of 283 articles on software defect prediction and related work was performed, of which 90 are referenced.