An exploratory study of package metrics as change size indicators in evolving object-oriented software

作者：Elish Mahmoud O^*

来源：Computer Systems Science and Engineering, 2013, 28(4): 251-257.

• Software metrics
• software evolution
• change size
• packages
• object-oriented software

Software change size prediction can be very useful and helpful in guiding the maintenance team; distributing the resources more efficiently; and, thus, enabling project managers and their teams to focus their effort and attention on the highly unstable artifacts during the software evolution process. This paper empirically explores a set of package-level metrics as change size indicators in evolving object-oriented software. Both structural properties (SP) metrics and historical changes (HC) metrics were explored. Metrics were collected and evaluated in the context of seven major releases of Apache Ant. The results indicate that there are statistically significant correlations between each of the HC metrics and packages%26apos; change size in multiple, sequential releases of Apache Ant. In addition, it was observed that the HC metrics are more accurate than the SP metrics in predicting change size in packages throughout the releases. Furthermore, there was no confounding effect of package size in the validity of some of the metrics.

• 出版日期2013-7
• 单位中国石油大学（北京）