Evolution analysis for Accessibility Excessiveness in Java

Abstract

In Java programs, access modifiers are used to control the accessibility of fields and methods from other objects. Choosing appropriate access modifiers is one of the key factors to improve program quality and to reduce potential vulnerability. In our previous work, we presented a static analysis method named Accessibility Excessiveness (AE) detection for each field and method in Java program. We have also developed an AE analysis tool named ModiChecker that analyzes each field and method of the input Java programs, and reports their excessiveness. In this paper, we have applied ModiChecker to several OSS repositories to investigate the evolution of AE over versions, and identified transition of AE status and the difference in the amount of AE change between major version releases and minor ones. Also we propose when to evaluate source code with AE analysis.