IMDAC: A robust intelligent software defect prediction model via multi‐objective optimization and end‐to‐end hybrid deep learning networks

Abstract Software defect prediction (SDP) aims to build an effective prediction model for historical defect data from software repositories by some specialized techniques or algorithms, and predict the defect proneness of new software modules. Nevertheless, the complex internal intrinsic structure hidden behind the defect data makes it challenging for the built prediction model to capture the most expressive defect feature representations, and largely limits the SDP performance. Fortunately, artificial intelligence is interacting closely with humans and provides powerful intelligent technical support for addressing these SDP issues. In this article, we propose a robust intelligent SDP model called IMDAC based on deep learning and soft computing techniques. This model has three main advantages: (1) an effective deep generative network—InfoGAN (information maximizing GANs) is employed to conduct data augmentation, namely generating sufficient defect instances and achieving defect class balance simultaneously. (2) Select the fewest representative feature subset for the minimum error via an advanced multi‐objective optimization approach—MSEA (multi‐stage evolutionary algorithm). (3) Build a powerful end‐to‐end deep defect predictor by hybrid deep learning techniques—DAE (Denoising AutoEncoder) and CNN (convolutional neural network), which can not only reconstruct a clean “repaired” input with strong robustness and generalization capabilities via DAE, but also learn the abstract deep semantic features with strong discriminating capability via CNN. Experimental results verify the superiority and robustness of the IMDAC model across 15 software projects.