Providing Software Library Selection Assistance By Using Metric-Based Comparisons

• Author / Creator

  Lopez de la Mora,Fernando

• Software libraries provide a set of reusable functionality, which helps developers write code in a systematic and timely manner. However, with the plethora of similar software libraries available in the market, selecting the appropriate
  one to use is often not a trivial task. Choosing libraries that are not well-suited for a project may lead to development delays or high maintenance. In this work, we investigate the idea of helping developers select libraries by providing them with a metric-based comparison of libraries in a given domain.
  Different developers care about different aspects of a library and two developers looking for a library in a given domain may not necessarily choose the same library. Thus, instead of directly recommending them a library to use, we empower developers with the information they need to make an informed decision. To evaluate this idea in practice, we presented software developers with a survey containing an initial implementation of a comparison of libraries, while obtaining feedback about our proposed approach and understanding the metrics developers care about. Our results show that developers find that the proposed technique provides useful information when selecting libraries.
  Based on the collected feedback from developers, we made enhancements to our metrics and comparisons and implemented a website whose objective is to serve as a source of library information, as well as a continuous surveying
  and crowd-sourcing mechanism to uncover metrics that influence developers’ decisions when choosing software libraries.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • metric-based comparison
  • software engineering
  • metrics
  • API
  • API selection assistance
  • survey
  • software library
  • empirical study

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3JM23X80

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.