Abstract :
What´s the state of the art in the tools we use to build software? To answer this question, I let a powerful server build from source code about 7,000 open source packages over a period of a month. The packages I built form a subset of the FreeBSD operating system ports collection, comprising a wide spectrum of application domains: from desktop utilities and biology applications to databases and development tools. The collection is representative of modern software because, unlike say a random sample of SourceForge.net projects, FreeBSD developers have found these programs useful enough to port to FreeBSD.
Keywords :
operating systems (computers); public domain software; software tools; FreeBSD operating system ports collection; SourceForge.net projects; open source packages; software tools; Application software; Central Processing Unit; Embedded system; Java; Productivity; Programming profession; Software maintenance; Software measurement; System software; Unified modeling language; abstraction; build-process; declarative language; domain-specific language; executable UML; programming language;
