Source versus object code extraction for recovering software architecture

Abstract

The architecture of many large software systems is rarely documented and if documented it is usually out of date. To support developers maintaining and evolving these systems, an up to date view of the architecture could be recovered from the system's implementation. Source code or object code extractors may be used to recover the architecture. In this paper, we explore using two types of extractors (source code and object code extractors) to recover the architecture of several large open source systems. We then investigate the differences between the results produced by these extractors to gain a better understanding of the benefits and limitations of each type of extractor. Our experimental results show that both types of extractors have their benefits and limitations. For example, an object code extractor is easier to implement while a source code extractor recovers more dependencies that exist in the source code as seen by developers.