Software evolution: the lifetime of fine-grained elements

A model regarding the lifetime of individual source code lines or tokens can estimate maintenance effort, guide preventive maintenance, and, more broadly, identify factors that can improve the efficiency of software development. We present methods and tools that allow tracking of each line’s or token’s birth and death. Through them, we...

Effective and Efficient API Misuse Detection via Exception Propagation and Search-Based Testing

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) typically come with (implicit) usage constraints. The violations of these constraints (API misuses) can lead to software crashes. Even though there are several tools that can detect API misuses, most of them suffer from a very high rate of false positives. We introduce Catcher, a novel API misuse...

Enabling Real-Time Feedback in Software Engineering

Modern software projects consist of more than just code: teams follow development processes, the code runs on servers or mobile phones and produces run time logs and users talk about the software in forums like StackOverflow and Twitter and rate it on app stores. Insights stemming from the real-time analysis of combined software engineering data...

On Software Modernisation due to Library Obsolescence

Software libraries, typically accessible through Application Programming<br/>Interfaces (APIs), enhance modularity and reduce development time. Nevertheless, their use reinforces system dependency on third-party software. When libraries become obsolete or their APIs change, performing the necessary modifications to dependent systems, can be time...

What are your Programming Language’s Energy-Delay Implications?

Motivation: Even though many studies examine the energy efficiency of hardware and embedded systems, those that investigate the energy consumption of software applications are still limited, and mostly focused on mobile applications. As modern applications become even more complex and heterogeneous a need arises for methods that can accurately...