Eclipse API usage: the good and the bad

Verfasser / Beitragende:
[John Businge, Alexander Serebrenik, Mark van den Brand]
Ort, Verlag, Jahr:
2015
Enthalten in:
Software Quality Journal, 23/1(2015-03-01), 107-141
Format:
Artikel (online)
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024 7 0 |a 10.1007/s11219-013-9221-3  |2 doi 
035 |a (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11219-013-9221-3 
245 0 0 |a Eclipse API usage: the good and the bad  |h [Elektronische Daten]  |c [John Businge, Alexander Serebrenik, Mark van den Brand] 
520 3 |a Today, when constructing software systems, many developers build their systems on top of frameworks. Eclipse is such a framework that has been in existence for over a decade. Like many other evolving software systems, the Eclipse platform has both stable and supported interfaces ("good”) and unstable, discouraged and unsupported interfaces ("bad”). In this study, we investigate Eclipse interface usage by Eclipse third-party plug-ins (ETPs) based on whether they use bad interfaces or not. The investigations, based on empirical analysis present the following observations. First, we discovered that 44% of the 512 analyzed Eclipse third-party plug-ins depend on "bad” interfaces and that developers continue to use "bad” interfaces. Second, we have observed that plug-ins that use or extend at least one "bad” interface are comparatively larger and use more functionality from Eclipse than those that use only "good” interfaces. Third, the findings show that the ETPs use a diverse set of "bad” interfaces. Fourth, we observed that the reason why the bad interfaces are being eliminated from the ETPs' source code is, because (ETP developers believe) these non-APIs will cause incompatibilities when a version of the ETP is ported to new Eclipse SDK release. Finally, we observed that when developers eliminate problematic "bad” interfaces, they either re-implement the same functionality in their own API, find equivalent SDK good interfaces, or completely delete the entities in the ETPs' source code that use the functionality from the "bad” interfaces. 
540 |a Springer Science+Business Media New York, 2013 
690 7 |a Eclipse  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a API usage  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a Software evolution  |2 nationallicence 
700 1 |a Businge  |D John  |u Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands  |4 aut 
700 1 |a Serebrenik  |D Alexander  |u Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands  |4 aut 
700 1 |a van den Brand  |D Mark  |u Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands  |4 aut 
773 0 |t Software Quality Journal  |d Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com  |g 23/1(2015-03-01), 107-141  |x 0963-9314  |q 23:1<107  |1 2015  |2 23  |o 11219 
856 4 0 |u https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-013-9221-3  |q text/html  |z Onlinezugriff via DOI 
898 |a BK010053  |b XK010053  |c XK010000 
900 7 |a Metadata rights reserved  |b Springer special CC-BY-NC licence  |2 nationallicence 
908 |D 1  |a research-article  |2 jats 
949 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |F NATIONALLICENCE  |b NL-springer 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 856  |E 40  |u https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-013-9221-3  |q text/html  |z Onlinezugriff via DOI 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a Businge  |D John  |u Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a Serebrenik  |D Alexander  |u Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a van den Brand  |D Mark  |u Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 773  |E 0-  |t Software Quality Journal  |d Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com  |g 23/1(2015-03-01), 107-141  |x 0963-9314  |q 23:1<107  |1 2015  |2 23  |o 11219