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A cross-platform analysis of bugs and bug-fixing in open source projects: desktop vs. Android vs. iOS

Authors:

Iulian Neamtiu,

Rajiv GuptaAuthors Info & Claims

EASE '15: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

Article No.: 7, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/2745802.2745808

Published: 27 April 2015 Publication History

Abstract

As smartphones continue to increase in popularity, understanding how software processes associated with the smartphone platform differ from the traditional desktop platform is critical for improving user experience and facilitating software development and maintenance. In this paper we focus specifically on differences in bugs and bug-fixing processes between desktop and smartphone software. Our study covers 444,129 bug reports in 88 open source projects on desktop, Android, and iOS. The study has two main thrusts: a quantitative analysis to discover similarities and differences between desktop and smartphone bug reports/processes; and a qualitative analysis where we extract topics from bug reports to understand bugs' nature, categories, and differences between platforms. Our findings include: during 2011--2013, iOS bugs were fixed three times faster compared to Android and desktop; top smartphone bug fixers are more involved in reporting bugs than top desktop bug fixers; and most frequent high-severity bugs are due to build issues on desktop, concurrency on Android, and application logic on iOS. Our study, findings, and recommendations are potentially useful to smartphone researchers and practitioners.

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Cited By

Baresi LDi Penta MQuattrocchi GTamburri DRubin JLam WCatolino GPoshyvanyk D(2024)How have iOS Development Technologies Changed over Time? A Study in Open-SourceProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 11th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems10.1145/3647632.3647988(33-42)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3647632.3647988
Aljedaani WMkaouer MEler MKessentini M(2024)Empirical Investigation of Accessibility Bug Reports in Mobile Platforms: A Chromium Case StudyProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642508(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642508
Johnson JMahmud JWendland TMoran KRubin JFazzini M(2022)An Empirical Investigation into the Reproduction of Bug Reports for Android Apps2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00048(321-322)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00048
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A cross-platform analysis of bugs and bug-fixing in open source projects: desktop vs. Android vs. iOS
1. Applied computing
  1. Computers in other domains
    1. Personal computers and PC applications
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties
      1. Interoperability

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

EASE '15: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

April 2015

305 pages

ISBN:9781450333504

DOI:10.1145/2745802

General Chair:
Jian Lv
Nanjing University, China
,
Program Chairs:
He (Jason) Zhang
Nanjing University, China
,
Muhammad Ali Babar
University of Adelaide, Australia

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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NJU: Nanjing University

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 April 2015

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National Science Foundation

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EASE '15

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NJU

EASE '15: 19th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

April 27 - 29, 2015

Nanjing, China

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EASE '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 20 of 65 submissions, 31%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 71 of 232 submissions, 31%

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Cited By

Baresi LDi Penta MQuattrocchi GTamburri DRubin JLam WCatolino GPoshyvanyk D(2024)How have iOS Development Technologies Changed over Time? A Study in Open-SourceProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 11th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems10.1145/3647632.3647988(33-42)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3647632.3647988
Aljedaani WMkaouer MEler MKessentini M(2024)Empirical Investigation of Accessibility Bug Reports in Mobile Platforms: A Chromium Case StudyProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642508(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642508
Johnson JMahmud JWendland TMoran KRubin JFazzini M(2022)An Empirical Investigation into the Reproduction of Bug Reports for Android Apps2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00048(321-322)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00048
Lin JZhang HAdams BHassan A(2022)Upstream bug management in Linux distributionsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10173-y27:6Online publication date: 1-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10173-y
Zhang TChen JZhan XLuo XLo DJiang H(2021)Where2Change: Change Request Localization for App ReviewsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.295694147:11(2590-2616)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2019.2956941
Wang SNagappan N(2021)Characterizing and Understanding Software Developer Networks in Security Development2021 IEEE 32nd International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)10.1109/ISSRE52982.2021.00061(534-545)Online publication date: Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISSRE52982.2021.00061
Scoccia GAutili M(2020)Web Frameworks for Desktop AppsProceedings of the 14th ACM / IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1145/3382494.3422171(1-6)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3382494.3422171
Salehnamadi NAlshayban AAhmed IMalek SGrundy JLe Goues CLo D(2020)ER catcherProceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3324884.3416639(324-335)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3324884.3416639
Lavazza LTosi DMorasca S(2020)An Empirical Study on the Persistence of SpotBugs Issues in Open-Source Software EvolutionQuality of Information and Communications Technology10.1007/978-3-030-58793-2_12(144-151)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58793-2_12
Aljedaani WNagappan MAdams BGodfrey MTilevich E(2019)A comparison of bugs across the iOS and Android platforms of two open source cross platform browser appsProceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems10.5555/3340730.3340748(76-86)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3340730.3340748
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