# SweRank: Software Issue Localization with Code Ranking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.07849 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07849/

## Key facts

- Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15793/) (2024)
- [FEVER: a large-scale dataset for Fact Extraction and VERification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05355/) (2018)
- [Text Embeddings by Weakly-Supervised Contrastive Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03533/) (2022)
- [Qwen2.5-Coder Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12186/) (2024)
- [OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16741/) (2024)
- [CodeT5: Identifier-aware Unified Pre-trained Encoder-Decoder Models for Code Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00859/) (2021)
- [Towards General Text Embeddings with Multi-stage Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03281/) (2023)
- [CodeSearchNet Challenge: Evaluating the State of Semantic Code Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09436/) (2019)
- [MTEB: Massive Text Embedding Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07316/) (2022)
- [The Stack: 3 TB of permissively licensed source code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15533/) (2022)
- [RepoBench: Benchmarking Repository-Level Code Auto-Completion Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03091/) (2023)
- [CodeT5+: Open Code Large Language Models for Code Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07922/) (2023)
- [Matryoshka Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13147/) (2022)
- [Nomic Embed: Training a Reproducible Long Context Text Embedder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01613/) (2024)
- [RankZephyr: Effective and Robust Zero-Shot Listwise Reranking is a Breeze!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02724/) (2023)
- [NEFTune: Noisy Embeddings Improve Instruction Finetuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05914/) (2023)
- [Gemini Embedding: Generalizable Embeddings from Gemini](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07891/) (2025)
- [SWE-Fixer: Training Open-Source LLMs for Effective and Efficient GitHub Issue Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05040/) (2025)
- [LocAgent: Graph-Guided LLM Agents for Code Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09089/) (2025)
- [NV-Retriever: Improving text embedding models with effective hard-negative mining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15831/) (2024)
- [RankVicuna: Zero-Shot Listwise Document Reranking with Open-Source Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15088/) (2023)
- [Arctic-Embed: Scalable, Efficient, and Accurate Text Embedding Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05374/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Self-Abstraction from Grounded Experience for Plan-Guided Policy Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05931/) (2025)
- [CORE-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Code Retrieval in the Era of Agentic Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11864/) (2026)
- [Agentic Software Issue Resolution with Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22256/) (2025)
- [Foundational Automatic Evaluators: Scaling Multi-Task Generative Evaluator Training for Reasoning-Centric Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17793/) (2025)
- [SweRank+: Multilingual, Multi-Turn Code Ranking for Software Issue Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20482/) (2025)
- [A Benchmark for Localizing Code and Non-Code Issues in Software Projects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25242/) (2025)
- [GraphLocator: Graph-guided Causal Reasoning for Issue Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22469/) (2025)
- [Loc2Repair: A Framework for Evaluating the Impact of File-Level Issue Localization in Repo-Level LLM Repair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30963/) (2026)
- [SHERLOC: Structured Diagnostic Localization for Code Repair Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24820/) (2026)
- [MM-IssueLoc: A Controlled Benchmark for Evaluating Visual Evidence in Multimodal Repository-Level Issue Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15205/) (2026)
- [Scrouting: Cost-Aware Routing of Coding Agents by Scouting the Repository First](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04804/) (2026)
- [SpIDER: Spatially Informed Dense Embedding Retrieval for Software Issue Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16956/) (2025)
- [Neurosymbolic Repo-level Code Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16021/) (2026)
- [PIPer: On-Device Environment Setup via Online Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25455/) (2025)
- [GREPO: A Benchmark for Graph Neural Networks on Repository-Level Bug Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13921/) (2026)
- [Libra: Training the Environment for Agentic Information Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00016/) (2026)
- [CodeNib: A Multi-View Data System for Serving Repository Context to Coding Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25431/) (2026)
- [A^2Agent: Action-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Repository-Level Code Localization Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29831/) (2026)
- [The Missing Complement: State-Conditioned Minimal Sufficient Evidence for Coding Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20050/) (2026)
- [Semantic Navigation for Issue Localization in Code Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31176/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Software issue localization, the task of identifying the precise code locations (files, classes, or functions) relevant to a natural language issue description (e.g., bug report, feature request), is a critical yet time-consuming aspect of software development. While recent LLM-based agentic approaches demonstrate promise, they often incur significant latency and cost due to complex multi-step reasoning and relying on closed-source LLMs. Alternatively, traditional code ranking models, typically optimized for query-to-code or code-to-code retrieval, struggle with the verbose and failure-descriptive nature of issue localization queries. To bridge this gap, we introduce SweRank, an efficient and effective retrieve-and-rerank framework for software issue localization. To facilitate training, we construct SweLoc, a large-scale dataset curated from public GitHub repositories, featuring real-world issue descriptions paired with corresponding code modifications. Empirical results on SWE-Bench-Lite and LocBench show that SweRank achieves state-of-the-art performance, outperforming both prior ranking models and costly agent-based systems using closed-source LLMs like Claude-3.5. Further, we demonstrate SweLoc's utility in enhancing various existing retriever and reranker models for issue localization, establishing the dataset as a valuable resource for the community.