Title :
How much does unused code matter for maintenance?
Author :
Eder, Sebastian ; Junker, Maximilian ; Jürgens, Elmar ; Hauptmann, Benedikt ; Vaas, Rudolf ; Prommer, Karl-Heinz
Author_Institution :
Inst. fur Inf., Tech. Univ. Munchen, Garching bei München, Germany
Abstract :
Software systems contain unnecessary code. Its maintenance causes unnecessary costs. We present tool-support that employs dynamic analysis of deployed software to detect unused code as an approximation of unnecessary code, and static analysis to reveal its changes during maintenance. We present a case study on maintenance of unused code in an industrial software system over the course of two years. It quantifies the amount of code that is unused, the amount of maintenance activity that went into it and makes the potential benefit of tool support explicit, which informs maintainers that are about to modify unused code.
Keywords :
approximation theory; program diagnostics; software maintenance; industrial software system; maintenance activity; static analysis; unnecessary code approximation; unnecessary costs; unused code detection; Assembly; Business; Information systems; Maintenance engineering; Production; Software systems; Software maintenance; dynamic analysis; unnecessary code; unused code;
Conference_Titel :
Software Engineering (ICSE), 2012 34th International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Zurich
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1066-6
Electronic_ISBN :
0270-5257
DOI :
10.1109/ICSE.2012.6227109