INES – National Institute of Science and Technology for Software Engineering

INES Researcher gets PhD

Antonio Soares de Azevedo Terceiro (DMCC-UFBA) has successfully presented his PhD viva examination, or thesis defence, “Characterizing the Evolution of Structural Complexity in Open Source Software Systems”, last Friday, March 23rd, 2012.

The examiners were Prof. Dalton Guerrero (UFCG), Prof. Guilherme Travassos (UFRJ), and Profs. Claudio Sant’Anna, Eduardo Almeida and Christina Chavez (UFBA).

Antonio’s advisors were Christina Chavez (advisor) and Manoel Mendonça (co-advisor). His work was supported by an one-year Fapesb scholarship, a three-year CNPq scholarship and also by the INES project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution” (2009-2011).

INES researchers at CSMR 2012

INES researchers, working in the context of the project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution” had 2 papers accepted at CSMR 2012:

(1) “Understanding Structural Complexity Evolution: a Quantitative Analysis”,
Antonio Terceiro, Manoel Mendonça, Christina Chavez (UFBA) and Daniela Cruzes (NTNU)

Abstract—Background: An increase in structural complexity
makes the source code of software projects more difficult to
understand, and consequently more difficult and expensive to
maintain and evolve. Knowing the factors that influence structural
complexity may help developers to avoid the effects of
higher levels of structural complexity on the maintainability of
their projects.
Aims: This paper investigates factors that might influence the
evolution of structural complexity.
Method: We analyzed the source code repositories of 5 free/open
source software projects, with commits as experimental units. For
each commit we measured the structural complexity variation it
caused, the experience of the developer who made the commit,
the size variation caused by the commit, and the change diffusion
of the commit.
Results: Change diffusion was the most influential among the factors
studied, followed by size variation and developer experience;
system growth was not necessarily associated with complexity
increase; all the factors we studied influenced at least two
projects; different projects were affected by different factors; and
the factors that influenced the increase in structural complexity
were usually not the same that influenced the decrease.
Conclusions: All the factors explored in this study should be
taken into consideration when analysing structural complexity
evolution. However, they do not fully explain the structural
complexity evolution in the studied projects: this suggests that
qualitative studies are needed in order to better understand
structural complexity evolution and identify other factors that
must be included in future quantitative analysis.

(Activity: http://amigos.ines.org.br/ines/viewTask.do?method=viewTask&code=572&project=8)

(2) “On the Relevance of Code Anomalies for Identifying Architecture Degradation Symptoms”, Isela Macia(PUC-Rio), Roberta Arcoverde(PUC-Rio), Alessandro Garcia(PUC-Rio), Christina Chavez (UFBA) and Arndt von Staa(PUC-Rio).

This work has been developed by PUC-Rio researchers,  and Christina Chavez (UFBA) co-authored it during her pos-doc at PUC-Rio.

PhD research internship at UBC

PhD student Antonio Soares de Azevedo Terceiro (DMCC-UFBA), member of the project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution”, will undertake a PhD research internship in Empirical Software Engineering at the Software Practices Lab, Department of Computer Science at UBC (University of British Columbia) from March to September, 2011, and will be supervised by professor Gail C. Murphy.

Professor Gail Murphy’s team has been working on the concept of Degree of Knowledge over source code elements. In his PhD, Antonio Terceiro investigates the influence of developer characteristics over the
evolution of source code structural complexity in free software projects. In this research internship, Degree of Knowledge over source code elements will be considered as one of the factors that may influence the variation in structural complexity, what will be investigated in a empirical study.

INES Project on Software Evolution has 3 papers accepted at the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering

Three papers related to the project  “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution” (in Portuguese, “Modelos, Técnicas e Ferramentas para Evoluçāo de Software”) were accepted as at the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, event co-located with the Brazilian Conference on Software: Theory and Practice (CBSoft), 2010.

• An Empirical Study on the Structural Complexity Introduced by Core and Peripheral Developers in Free Software Projects . Antonio Terceiro,(UFBA), Luiz Romário Rios, (UFBA), Christina Chavez (UFBA)
• Identifying Code Smells with Multiple Concern Views . Glauco Carneiro, (UFBA), Marcos Silva, (PUC-RS), Leandra Mara, (PUC-Rio), Eduardo Figueiredo,(UFMG), Claudio Sant`Anna, (UFBA), Alessandro Garcia (PUC-Rio), Manoel Mendonça (UFBA)
• A Study of the Relationships between Source Code Metrics and Attractiveness in Free Software Projects . Paulo Meirelles,(IME-USP), Carlos Santos Jr.,(USP), Antonio Terceiro,(UFBA), João Miranda (USP), Christina Chavez, (UFBA)

INES at QACOS-OSSPL

Antonio Terceiro presents a paper at QACOS-OSSPL (QACOS-OSSPL: A Joint Workshop of QACOS and OSSPL, Quality and Architectural Concerns in Open Source Software / Open Source Software and Product Lines), with results related to the INES project “Models, Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution”.

• Title: Structural Complexity Evolution in Free Software Projects: A Case Study
• Authors: Antonio Soares de Azevedo Terceiro and Christina von Flach Garcia Chavez
• Event: QACOS-OSSPL: A Joint Workshop of QACOS and OSSPL, 2009, Skovde, Sweden