Buildtechs

A Large-Scale Empirical Study of the Relationship between Build

Technology and Build Maintenance

ShaneMcIntosh

Ahmed E. Hassan

BramAdams

MeiyappanNagappan

Audris Mockus

What is a build system?Source code

2

What is a build system?Source code

2

Deliverable

3

.tex

.c

.cc

.o

.o

.dvi

Build systems describe how sources are translated into deliverables

.a

.exe

.pdf

.deb

4) Publishresults

1) Listen forchanges

2) Buildchanges

3) Executetests

ContinuousIntegration:Enabled by

the build system

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“...nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”

- Benjamin Franklin

The Build “Tax”

An Empirical Study of Build Maintenance EffortS. McIntosh, B. Adams, T. H. D. Nguyen, Y. Kamei, A. E. Hassan

[ICSE 2011]

Up to 27% of source changes require build

changes, too!

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Teams even migrate to different build technologies

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...But does build technology really influence build

maintenance activity?

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Low-Level

Abstraction-Based

Low-level scripts generated from

project metadata

Framework-Driven

Assumes standard project layout and

dependencies

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MakeRake

Autotools

Dependency Management

Automatically manages 3rd-party API dependencies

File-level dependencies are explicitly declared

Low-Level

Abstraction-Based



project metadata

Framework-Driven


dependencies

9

MakeRake

Autotools



Low-Level

Abstraction-Based



project metadata

Framework-Driven


dependencies

10

MakeRake

Autotools



Low-Level

Abstraction-Based



project metadata

Framework-Driven


dependencies

11

MakeRake

Autotools



Low-Level

Abstraction-Based



project metadata

Framework-Driven


dependencies

12

MakeRake

Autotools



Amassing and indexing a large sample of version

control systemsTowards the census of public

source code historyA. Mockus [MSR 2009]

Mining a Large-Scale Corpus

843,976 source code repositories!

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repo.or.cz

Software ForgesMining a Large-

Scale Corpus


13




repo.or.cz

Software Forges

Software Ecosystems



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repo.or.cz

Software Forges

Software Ecosystems

Large Projects



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Low−level Abstraction Frame Dependency

0

100

200

Ant Jam Makefile Rake SCons Autotools CMake Maven Bundler Ivy

Build

chu

rn ra

teFramework builds tend to churn most repo.or.cz

Software Forges

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−0.2

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0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

Apache − Ant vs. Maven Debian − Make vs. Autotools GNU − Make vs. Autotools

Logi

cal c

oupl

ing

Source code coupling is tightest with framework

and abstraction

Low-level Abstraction

Software Ecosystems

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Low-level Framework Low-level Abstraction

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1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Build

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2000 2004 2008 2012

Build

aut

hor r

atio

KDE

AutotoolsAuthorshipdecreases

Large Projects

16

Migration helps!

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0.25

0.50

0.75

1.00

1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Build

aut

hor r

atio

PostgreSQL

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0.00

0.25

0.50

0.75

1.00

2000 2004 2008 2012

Build

aut

hor r

atio

KDE

AutotoolsAuthorshipdecreases

Large Projects

Teams dedicate build experts to help cope

with the build tax16

Migration helps!

Documents

Buildtechs