Authors:
            
                    Yasin Sazid
                    
                        
                                1
                            
                    
                    ; 
                
                    Sharmista Kuri
                    
                        
                                1
                            
                    
                    ; 
                
                    Kazi Ahmed
                    
                        
                                2
                            
                    
                     and
                
                    Abdus Satter
                    
                        
                                1
                            
                    
                    
                
        
        
            Affiliations:
            
                    
                        
                                1
                            
                    
                    Institute of Information Technology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh
                
                    ; 
                
                    
                        
                                2
                            
                    
                    Computer Science Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.
                
        
        
        
        
        
             Keyword(s):
            Commit Classification, Commit Message, Maintenance Activity, Large Language Models, GPT, In-Context Learning.
        
        
            
                
                
            
        
        
            
                Abstract: 
                Classifying software changes, i.e., commits into maintenance activities enables improved decision-making in software maintenance, thereby decreasing maintenance costs. Commonly, researchers have tried commit classification using keyword-based analysis of commit messages. Source code changes and density data have also been used for this purpose. Recent works have leveraged contextual semantic analysis of commit messages using pre-trained language models. But these approaches mostly depend on training data, making their ability to generalize a matter of concern. In this study, we explore the possibility of using in-context learning capabilities of large language models in commit classification. In-context learning does not require training data, making our approach less prone to data overfitting and more generalized. Experimental results using GPT-3 achieves a highest accuracy of 75.7% and kappa of 61.7%. It is similar to performances of other baseline models except one, highlighting t
                he applicability of in-context learning in commit classification.
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