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An exploratory study of api changes and usages based on apache and eclipse ecosystems

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Abstract

Frameworks are widely used in modern software development to reduce development costs. They are accessed through their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which specify the contracts with client programs. When frameworks evolve, API backward-compatibility cannot always be guaranteed and client programs must upgrade to use the new releases. Because framework upgrades are not cost-free, observing API changes and usages together at fine-grained levels is necessary to help developers understand, assess, and forecast the cost of each framework upgrade. Whereas previous work studied API changes in frameworks and API usages in client programs separately, we analyse and classify API changes and usages together in 22 framework releases from the Apache and Eclipse ecosystems and their client programs. We find that (1) missing classes and methods happen more often in frameworks and affect client programs more often than the other API change types do, (2) missing interfaces occur rarely in frameworks but affect client programs often, (3) framework APIs are used on average in 35 % of client classes and interfaces, (4) most of such usages could be encapsulated locally and reduced in number, and (5) about 11 % of APIs usages could cause ripple effects in client programs when these APIs change. Based on these findings, we provide suggestions for developers and researchers to reduce the impact of API evolution through language mechanisms and design strategies.

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Notes

  1. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=619117

  2. http://wiki.eclipse.org/Evolving_Java-based_APIs_2/

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

  4. http://tattletale.jboss.org/

  5. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-13.html

  6. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-13.html

  7. http://maven.apache.org/

  8. http://www.eclipse.org/aether/

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

  10. http://maven.apache.org/

  11. http://www.eclipse.org/aether/

  12. http://asm.ow2.org/

  13. http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

  14. http://lucene.apache.org/

  15. http://search.maven.org/

  16. http://marketplace.eclipse.org/

  17. http://www.ptidej.net/downloads/replications/emse2014b/

  18. http://sourceforge.net/

  19. http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/29/ms_quietly_dumps_windows_opengl/

  20. http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/felix/releases/org.apache.felix.framework-4.0.0/doc/changelog.txt

  21. http://www.docjar.com/docs/api/org/eclipse/swt/internal/win32/OS.html

  22. http://jdiff.org/

  23. http://sourceforge.net/

  24. http://mojo.codehaus.org/animal-sniffer/

  25. http://mojo.codehaus.org/clirr-maven-plugin/index.html

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

  27. http://jdiff.org/

  28. http://www.sab39.org/Software/Japitools/42/

  29. http://tattletale.jboss.org/

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Acknowledgments

We thank Daniel German for providing the Maven central repository snapshots. This work has been partly funded by FQRNT, NSERC, and the Canada Research Chair on Patterns in Mixed-language Systems. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on previous versions of this paper.

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  1. DGIGL, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Quebec, Canada

    Wei Wu, Foutse Khomh, Bram Adams, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc & Giuliano Antoniol

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  1. Wei Wu
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  2. Foutse Khomh
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Correspondence to Wei Wu.

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Communicated by: Emerson Murphy-Hill

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Wu, W., Khomh, F., Adams, B. et al. An exploratory study of api changes and usages based on apache and eclipse ecosystems. Empir Software Eng 21, 2366–2412 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-015-9411-7

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