  Mining Software Repositories (MSR) has become an essential activity in
software development. Mining architectural information to support architecting
activities, such as architecture understanding, has received significant
attention in recent years. However, there is a lack of clarity on what
literature on mining architectural information is available. Consequently, this
may create difficulty for practitioners to understand and adopt the
state-of-the-art research results, such as what approaches should be adopted to
mine what architectural information in order to support architecting
activities. It also hinders researchers from being aware of the challenges and
remedies for the identified research gaps. We aim to identify, analyze, and
synthesize the literature on mining architectural information in terms of
architectural information and sources mined, architecting activities supported,
approaches and tools used, and challenges faced. An SMS has been conducted on
the literature published between January 2006 and December 2022. Of the 104
primary studies selected, 7 categories of architectural information have been
mined, among which architectural description is the most mined architectural
information; 11 categories of sources have been leveraged for mining
architectural information, among which version control system is the most
popular source; 11 architecting activities can be supported by the mined
architectural information, among which architecture understanding is the most
supported activity; 95 approaches and 56 tools were proposed and employed in
mining architectural information; and 4 types of challenges in mining
architectural information were identified. This SMS provides researchers with
future directions and help practitioners be aware of what approaches and tools
can be used to mine what architectural information from what sources to support
various architecting activities.
