NDLI: Identifying and understanding header file hotspots in C/C++ build processes

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	McIntosh, Shane Adams, Bram Nagappan, Meiyappan Hassan, Ahmed E.
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	Software developers rely on a fast build system to incrementally compile their source code changes and produce modified deliverables for testing and deployment. Header files, which tend to trigger slow rebuild processes, are most problematic if they also change frequently during the development process, and hence, need to be rebuilt often. In this paper, we propose an approach that analyzes the build dependency graph (i.e., the data structure used to determine the minimal list of commands that must be executed when a source code file is modified), and the change history of a software system to pinpoint header file hotspots—header files that change frequently and trigger long rebuild processes. Through a case study on the GLib, PostgreSQL, Qt, and Ruby systems, we show that our approach identifies header file hotspots that, if improved, will provide greater improvement to the total future build cost of a system than just focusing on the files that trigger the slowest rebuild processes, change the most frequently, or are used the most throughout the codebase. Furthermore, regression models built using architectural and code properties of source files can explain 32–57 % of these hotspots, identifying subsystems that are particularly hotspot-prone and would benefit the most from architectural refinement.
Starting Page	619
Ending Page	647
Page Count	29
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09288910
Journal	Automated Software Engineering
Volume Number	23
Issue Number	4
e-ISSN	15737535
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2015-07-22
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Build systems Performance analysis Mining software repositories Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics) Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Software

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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