Abstract

Information retrieval (IR) extracts and organizes natural-language information found in unstructured text. Many of the challenges faced by software engineers can be addressed using IR techniques on the unstructured text provided by source code and its associated documents. A survey of IR-based techniques applied to software engineering (SE) challenges during the initial development process is presented. In particular, the following problems are considered: requirements discovery, maintaining software repositories, establishing traceability links, efficient software reuse, and effective software metrics. These techniques highlight the bright future that IR brings to addressing SE problems.