为什么我们要破坏api ?开发者的第一个答案

2017 IEEE 24th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER) Pub Date : 2017-02-01 DOI:10.1109/SANER.2017.7884640

Laerte Xavier, André C. Hora, M. T. Valente

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引用次数: 16

摘要

破坏契约对API客户端有重大影响。尽管如此，最近的研究表明，库通常是向后不兼容的，并且破坏性更改的速度随着时间的推移而增加。然而，促使库开发人员与客户撕毁合同的具体原因尚不清楚。在本文中，我们描述了与库开发人员的定性研究和API破坏变化的真实实例。我们的目标是:(i)引出开发人员引入破坏性变更的原因;(ii)检查他们是否意识到这些变化的风险。我们对流行Java库的顶级贡献者的调查揭示了开发人员破坏API契约的五个原因。此外，它还表明，大多数开发人员都意识到这些风险，并且在某些情况下，采用策略来减轻这些风险。最后，我们展望未来的研究，以加强我们目前的发现。通过这项研究，我们希望为更好地评估API破坏变化的风险和影响提供工具。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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Why do we break APIs? First answers from developers

Breaking contracts have a major impact on API clients. Despite this fact, recent studies show that libraries are often backward incompatible and that the rate of breaking changes increase over time. However, the specific reasons that motivate library developers to break contracts with their clients are still unclear. In this paper, we describe a qualitative study with library developers and real instance of API breaking changes. Our goal is to (i) elicit the reasons why developers introduce breaking changes; and (ii) check if they are aware about the risks of such changes. Our survey with the top contributors of popular Java libraries contributes to reveal a list of five reasons why developers break API contracts. Moreover, it also shows that most of developers are aware of these risks and, in some cases, adopt strategies to mitigate them. We conclude by prospecting a future study to strengthen our current findings. With this study, we expect to contribute on delineating tools to better assess the risks and impacts of API breaking changes.

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来源期刊

2017 IEEE 24th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)

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