A Study of Ripple Effects in Software Ecosystems (ICSE Presentation)

A Study of Ripple Effects In Software Ecosystems

Romain Robbes Mircea LunguUniversity of Chile University of Bern

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Ripple Effects

Architecture of Moose 3.2 made with Softwarenaut


Ecosystem Ripple Effects

Moose in the SCG Eco-system, made with SPOTuesday, June 7, 2011

Ecosystem Ripple Effects

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Evidence?Moose in the SCG Eco-system, made with SPOTuesday, June 7, 2011

Evidence from mailing lists

• In the paper

• Seaside

• Moose

• ...



• In the paper

• Seaside

• Moose

• ...

Seaside User: I noticed that the dialog classes listed below are not in [new version]. I am wondering if these classes have been dropped, have not been ported to [new version] or does their func- tionality exists elsewhere?



• In the paper

• Seaside

• Moose

• ...

Seaside User: I noticed that the dialog classes listed below are not in [new version]. I am wondering if these classes have been dropped, have not been ported to [new version] or does their func- tionality exists elsewhere?

Seaside Developer: They have been dropped. A mail went out to this list if anybody still used them and nobody replied. [...] Personally I donʼt know of any application that uses these dialogs.



• In the paper

• Seaside

• Moose

• ...

Moose User: [...] where is MOLabelShape, why was it deleted?? I use it and now is gone!!! I even had a specialization of it [...]


Evidence from an ecosystem history


Evidence from an ecosystem history

• SqueakSource - More than

• 7 years of history

• 2000 projects

• 3000 developers


Searching for Ripples


Searching for Ripples• Source: additions, deletions, modifications, deprecations



• Algorithm for deprecation-based-ripples




1. Find all the entities in the ecosystem that were deprecated





2. For each look at all the events that involve that entity and/or its suggested replacement





2. For each look at all the events that involve that entity and/or its suggested replacement

3. Replacements that happened after the deprecation as consequences of a ripple


Top 5 Ripples from The Case Study

Origin System Deprecated Method Systematic Replacement

# of Affected Systems

# of Affected Developers

System-Support Author initials Author fullName 120 110Seaside WACanvas bold: WACanvas strong: 61 59Seaside WASession

registerForBackgracking:(...) states 43 47

Famix-Core FAMIXNamedEntity packagedIn

FAMIXNamedEntity parentPackage

33 11

Kernel ClassDescription metaclass ClassDescription theMetaClass

31 34

System-Support Utilities authorInitials Author initials 37 45Kernel Object isKindOf:orOf: 12 24Collections-Text Text isoToSqueak 18 22


A Ripple Example

remove

add

old

new

... other

ripple

revert


A Ripple Example

packagedIn renamed to

parentPackage

remove

add

old

new

... other

ripple

revert


A Ripple Example

update, revert, update again

remove

add

old

new

... other

original

ripple

revert


A Ripple Example

ripples


A Ripple Example

inconsistent state


Conclusions


Conclusions• Evidence that ecosystem ripple effects can



• Have a broad impact




• Have a long life





• Developers don’t know their clients






• Angry impactees






• Angry impactees

• Defensive deprecation


Ripple Effects of the Article



• Extended Version




• Tool Support




• Tool Support

• Study replication in different ecosystems


A Study of Ripple Effects in Software Ecosystems (ICSE Presentation)

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