Five Years of Software Architecture Checking: A Case Study of Eclipse

Over time, source code tends to drift from the intended software architecture, often resulting in the loss of desired software qualities. To help keep code aligned with the intended architecture, the developers of core parts of the open source Eclipse platform introduced API Tools to express and check architectural rules. Researchers analyzed five years of Eclipse architecture-checking reports that API Tools produced. They investigated what kinds of rules the developers found helpful to check, how code diverged from the intended architecture, and how the developers dealt with architectural violations over time. This article is part of a special issue on Software Architecture.