SUITE is a workshop that focuses on exploring the notion of search as a fundamental activity during software development. The first two editions of SUITE were held at ICSE 2009/2010 [1, 2], and they have focused on the building of a research community that brings researchers and practioners who are interested in the research areas that SUITE addresses. While this thrid workshop continues the effort of community building, it puts more focus on addressing directly some of the urgent issues identified by previous two workshops, encouraging researchers to contribute to and take advantage of common datasets that we have started assembling for SUITE research.

SUITE is a workshop that focuses on exploring the notion of search as a fundamental activity during software development. The first edition of SUITE (SUITE 2009 [4]) was held at ICSE 2009. SUITE 2010, like its predecessor, devotes its attention to various research topics pertaining to the information needs of software developers. In SUITE 2010, we plan to emphasize open issues identified in SUITE 2009. We aim to continue building an active network of people interested in the research area that SUITE addresses.

Studies have shown that programmers frequently seek external information during programming, from source code and documents, as well as from other programmers because much of the information remains in the heads of programmers. Programmers therefore often ask other programmers questions to seek information in a timely fashion to carry out their work. This information seeking entails several conflicting factors. From the perspective of the information-seeking programmer, not asking questions degrades productivity. Conversely, asking questions interrupts other programmers and degrades their productivity, and may be frowned upon by peers due to the perceived social inconsideration of the information seeker. From the perspective of the recipients of the question, even though helping is costly, not helping also incurs social costs due to the deviation from social norms. To balance all these factors, this paper proposes the STeP_IN (Socio-Technical Platform for In situ Networking) framework to guide the design of systems that support information seeking during different phases of programming. The framework facilitates access to the information in the heads of other programmers while minimizing the negative impacts on the overall productivity of the team.

The creation of modern software systems requires knowledge from a wide range of domains: application domains, computer hardware and operating systems, algorithms, programming languages, vast amount of component libraries, development environments, the history of the software system, and users. Because few software developers have all the required knowledge, the development of software is no longer confined to an individual but has to rely on distributed cognition by reaching into a complex and networked world of information and computer mediated collaboration. Knowledge collaboration has thus become an important aspect of software development.

This paper describes a system called STeP/spl I.bar/IN (standing for socio-technical platform for in situ networking) that assists software developer to find and learn Java API libraries. It provides individualized search interface for Java developers, examples that illustrate the usage, and more distinctively a facilitating mechanism that connects Java developers to exchange expertise based on their expertise and social relations. STeP/spl I.bar/IN is designed and developed based on the dynamic community theory, a new collaboration form that we have proposed.

Nowadays few software systems can be produced by a single software developer. Most software systems require collaborative development due to the required brawn power brought by multiple hands. At the same time, because software systems are knowledge artifacts that involve knowledge from multiple domains that a single software developer often does not possess, collaboration also becomes a necessity due to the required brainy power brought by multiple minds. Merging the above two lines of requirements, we view knowledge collaboration as an essential elements in future software development technology and support environments. This paper discusses different forms of knowledge collaboration that exist in software development and suitable conditions for successful knowledge collaboration.

Software development is a knowledge intensive activity and software developers are knowledge workers. Knowledge needed for software development is often distributed among different developers. Supporting efficient knowledge collaboration and transfer is thus essential for software development organizations to remain competitive. This paper proposes a new theory /sub y/namic community to support knowledge collaboration and discusses its application in software development. Dynamic community integrates the traditional knowledge management approach in which knowledge is formalized and accumulated in knowledge repositories, and the community-based knowledge collaboration approach in which knowledge is transferred through informal community participation and human contacts. The dynamic community theory takes into full consideration individual knowledge workers' ever-changing needs for new knowledge as well as the role of social relationship of knowledge workers in effective knowledge collaboration. This paper introduces the dynamic community theory, a general system architecture of sociotechnical environments in support of dynamic community, and its application in software development.

An Open Source Software (OSS) project is unlikely to be successful unless there is an accompanied community that provides the platform for developers and users to collaborate. Members of such communities are volunteers whose motivation to participate and contribute is of essential importance to the success of OSS projects. In this paper, we aim to create an understanding of what motivates people to participate in OSS communities. We theorize that learning is one of the motivational forces. Our theory is grounded in the learning theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and is supported by analyzing the social structure of OSS communities and the co-evolution between OSS systems and communities. We also discuss practical implications of our theory for creating and maintaining sustainable OSS communities as well as for software engineering research and education.

Technical, cognitive, and social factors inhibit the widespread success of systematic software reuse. Our research is primarily concerned with the cognitive and social challenges faced by software developers: how to motivate them to reuse and how to reduce the difficulty of locating components from a large reuse repository. Our research has explored a new interaction style between software developers and reuse repository systems enabled by information delivery mechanisms. Instead of passively waiting for software developers to explore the reuse repository with explicit queries, information delivery autonomously locates and presents components by using the developers' partially written programs as implicit queries.We have designed, implemented, and evaluated a system called CodeBroker, which illustrates different techniques to address the essential challenges in information delivery: to make the delivered information relevant to the task-at-hand and personalized to the background knowledge of an individual developer. Empirical evaluations of CodeBroker show that information delivery is effective in promoting reuse.

An inherent dilemma exists in the design of high-functionality applications (such as repositories of reusable software components). In order to be useful, high-functionality applications have to provide a large number of features, creating huge learning problems for users. We address this dilemma by developing intelligent interfaces that support learning on demand by enabling users to learn new features when they are needed during work. We support learning on demand with information delivery by identifying learning opportunities of which users might not be aware. The challenging issues in implementing information delivery are discussed and techniques to address them are illustrated with the CodeBroker system. CodeBroker supports Java programmers in learning reusable software components in the context of their normal development environments and practice by proactively delivering task-relevant and personalized information. Evaluations of the system have shown its effectiveness in supporting learning on demand.

The paper proposes a novel approach to locating software components from a large component repository: context-aware browsing. Without any explicit input from software developers, this approach automatically locates and presents a list of software components that could possibly be used in the current development situation. This automation of the component location process not only greatly reduces the search space of components so that software developers can easily browse and choose the desired components, but also enables software developers to use components whose existence they do not even anticipate. A software agent that supports context-aware browsing has been developed and evaluated.

Although software reuse can improve both the quality and productivity of software development, it will not do so until software developers stop believing that it is not worth their effort to find a component matching their current problem. In addition, if the developers do not anticipate the existence of a given component, they will not even make an effort to find it in the first place.