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An empirical study of integration activities in distributions of open source software

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Abstract

Reuse of software components, either closed or open source, is considered to be one of the most important best practices in software engineering, since it reduces development cost and improves software quality. However, since reused components are (by definition) generic, they need to be customized and integrated into a specific system before they can be useful. Since this integration is system-specific, the integration effort is non-negligible and increases maintenance costs, especially if more than one component needs to be integrated. This paper performs an empirical study of multi-component integration in the context of three successful open source distributions (Debian, Ubuntu and FreeBSD). Such distributions integrate thousands of open source components with an operating system kernel to deliver a coherent software product to millions of users worldwide. We empirically identified seven major integration activities performed by the maintainers of these distributions, documented how these activities are being performed by the maintainers, then evaluated and refined the identified activities with input from six maintainers of the three studied distributions. The documented activities provide a common vocabulary for component integration in open source distributions and outline a roadmap for future research on software integration.

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Notes

  1. http://snapshot.debian.org/

  2. http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main

  3. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=XYZ with XYZ the bug identifier

  4. http://api.launchpad.net/1.0/

  5. http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main

  6. Manual search using the bug identifier on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

  7. ftp3.ie.FreeBSD.org::FreeBSD/development/FreeBSD-CVS/ports/

  8. :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.tw.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs

  9. http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=XYZ with XYZ the bug identifier

  10. This notation refers to a bug report in the distribution’s bug repository.

  11. If the maintainer finds out that the interface did change without a SONAME update, she would contact upstream to ask for an update of the SONAME, then perform an Upstream Sync of the updated library before resuming the Dependency Management of the library’s reverse-dependencies.

  12. http://bit.ly/FOCJHf

  13. http://lwn.net/Articles/160330/

  14. http://bit.ly/z3ORxT

  15. http://lwn.net/Articles/282038/

  16. http://bit.ly/w7rn04

  17. http://www.links.org/?p=327

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all maintainers and release engineers of Debian, Ubuntu and FreeBSD who participated in our study, either directly (providing feedback on the documented activities), or indirectly (providing insights into the fascinating world of OSS distributions).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MCIS, Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, Canada

    Bram Adams

  2. SAIL, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    Ryan Kavanagh & Ahmed E. Hassan

  3. University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada

    Daniel M. German

Authors
  1. Bram Adams
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  2. Ryan Kavanagh
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  3. Ahmed E. Hassan
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  4. Daniel M. German
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bram Adams.

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Communicated by: Filippo Lanubile

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Adams, B., Kavanagh, R., Hassan, A.E. et al. An empirical study of integration activities in distributions of open source software. Empir Software Eng 21, 960–1001 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-015-9371-y

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