Automated Identification of Tasks in Development Sessions

Task switching occurs frequently during the work of software developers. While there are already several approaches aiming at assisting developers in recovering their contexts of previous tasks, they generally rely on the developer to identify the beginning of each task. We propose a new technique for automatically splitting a development session into task-related subsections, based on the interaction of the developer with the IDE. The technique also shows potential benefits for automatic concern detection and for suggestions for code investigation. We present the technique, the results of a study conducted for its initial validation, and we discuss the additional potential benefits under investigation.