Research on Usage Pattern of Task Lists for Open Source Communities

As open source collaboration platforms now offer a code branching-based contribution model, more and more open source projects are adopting this collaboration mechanism. The issue mechanism serves as a critical component in organizing tasks or defects within a project. However, when an issue's work-load is substantial and lacks effective task splitting and progress tracking, it can significantly hinder development efficiency and quality. While the task list mechanism introduced by GitHub holds promise as a potential solution, its application model requires further theoretical research. To address this research gap, this paper aims to explore the application patterns of task lists in the GitHub open source community. Specifically, this study selects three popular open source projects from the rust-lang community on GitHub and quantitatively analyzes their usage of task lists and their correlation with issue feature metrics. The study's results provide preliminary insights into the current state of task list application in the open source community and are intended to guide developers in their collaborative task management efforts.