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Preventing Composition Problems in Modular Java Applications

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Software Quality. The Future of Systems- and Software Development (SWQD 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 238))

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Abstract

Java JAR files have become a common means to bring reusability into Java programming. While they allow developers to easily share and use third-party libraries, they bring new challenges as well. This paper addresses the problem of Linkage Errors that occur when a type incompatibility or a missing dependency between two libraries is detected at runtime. This is a direct impact of composing applications from pre-existing binary libraries as the problem would be normally detected during compilation. A problem may occur relatively easily as rules of source and binary compatibility in Java differ and may be counter-intuitive. To deal with this problem, we offer a set of tools that analyse existing binaries and discover problems normally leading to runtime errors. The tools work automatically, may complement existing testing, and find problems effectively from the start of development. Their additional features such as detection of redundant or duplicated libraries are usually not provided by standard testing tools.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/LinkageError.html (Jun 2015).

  2. 2.

    http://sab39.netreach.com/Software/Japitools/42/.

  3. 3.

    http://clirr.sourceforge.net/.

  4. 4.

    http://ispras.linuxbase.org/index.php/Java_API_Compliance_Checker.

  5. 5.

    http://depfind.sourceforge.net/.

  6. 6.

    https://code.google.com/p/joops/.

  7. 7.

    https://maven.apache.org/.

  8. 8.

    https://gradle.org/.

  9. 9.

    https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-io/.

  10. 10.

    http://asm.ow2.org/.

  11. 11.

    https://eclipse.org/.

  12. 12.

    https://jenkins-ci.org/.

  13. 13.

    https://developer.ibm.com/urbancode/products/urbancode-release/.

  14. 14.

    http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.commons/commons-io (Jun 2015), http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/commons-io/commons-io (Jun 2015).

  15. 15.

    https://github.com/kjezek/simple-booking-study.

  16. 16.

    http://www.sonarqube.org/.

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Acknowledgement

This publication was supported by the project LO1506 of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and by the UWB grant SGS-2013-029 Advanced Computer and Information Systems.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. NTIS – New Technologies for the Information Society, University of West Bohemia, Univerzitni 8, 306 14, Pilsen, Czech Republic

    Kamil Jezek & Lukas Holy

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of West Bohemia, Univerzitni 8, 306 14, Pilsen, Czech Republic

    Jakub Danek

Authors
  1. Kamil Jezek
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  2. Lukas Holy
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  3. Jakub Danek
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kamil Jezek .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Dietmar Winkler

  2. Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna University of Technology Inst. of S/W Tech. and Interactive Sys., Vienna, Austria

    Stefan Biffl

  3. Software Quality Lab GmbH, Linz, Austria

    Johannes Bergsmann

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Jezek, K., Holy, L., Danek, J. (2016). Preventing Composition Problems in Modular Java Applications. In: Winkler, D., Biffl, S., Bergsmann, J. (eds) Software Quality. The Future of Systems- and Software Development. SWQD 2016. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 238. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27033-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27033-3_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27032-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27033-3

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