Exception handling bug hazards in Android

Results from a mining study and an exploratory survey

Journal article (2017)

Authors

R. De Souza Coelho Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
Lucas Almeida Campus São Gonçalo do Amarante., Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
G. Gousios Software Engineering - EEMCS
A. van Deursen Software Technology
Christoph Treude University of Adelaide
Research Group
Software Engineering (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2017 R. De Souza Coelho, Lucas Almeida, G. Gousios, A. van Deursen, Christoph Treude
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-016-9443-7
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Published Date

2017-6

Language

English

Reuse Rights

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Software Technology

Research Group

Software Engineering

Abstract

Adequate handling of exceptions has proven difficult for many software engineers. Mobile app developers in particular, have to cope with compatibility, middleware, memory constraints, and battery restrictions. The goal of this paper is to obtain a thorough understanding of common exception handling bug hazards that app developers face. To that end, we first provide a detailed empirical study of over 6,000 Java exception stack traces we extracted from over 600 open source Android projects. Key insights from this study include common causes for system crashes, and common chains of wrappings between checked and unchecked exceptions. Furthermore, we provide a survey with 71 developers involved in at least one of the projects analyzed. The results corroborate the stack trace findings, and indicate that developers are unaware of frequently occurring undocumented exception handling behavior. Overall, the findings of our study call for tool support to help developers understand their own and third party exception handling and wrapping logic.

Files

TUD_SERG_2016_018.pdf
(.pdf | 1.39 Mb)
TUD_SERG_2016_018.pdf
(.pdf | 1.39 Mb)
- Embargo expired in 13-08-2017