A qualitative analysis of software build system changes and build ownership styles

Context: Recent empirical studies have shown quantitatively how software build systems, which are responsible for converting software artifacts into an installable deliverable for the end user, induce considerable overhead on software developers, taking away their focus from actual development. Goal: Little, however, is known of what are the typical types of changes that these developers need to make to build systems, the characteristics of these changes and whether developers work on these changes by themselves, or are co-ordinated by build experts. Method: This paper qualitatively investigates the build commit history of 18 open-source projects from the Apache and Eclipse eco-systems, over a period of fourteen months, using manual tagging and classification of change types and build system ownership styles. Results: "Corrective", "Adaptive" and "New Functionality" build changes introduce considerably higher churn and are more invasive, while many changes are identified by accident during regular development. Having dedicated build experts allows software projects to make more invasive "Adaptive" changes. Conclusions: Build system studies need to take into account the type of build change, since not all build changes are equal.