A Large-Scale Empirical Study on Software Reuse in Mobile Apps

Author

Mojica, Israel J. ; Adams, Bram ; Nagappan, Meiyappan ; Dienst, Steffen ; Berger, Theodore ; Hassan, Ahmed E.

Volume

31

Issue

2

fYear

2014

fDate

Mar.-Apr. 2014

Firstpage

78

Lastpage

86

Abstract

In less than five years, the number of mobile apps has grown exponentially, with more than 1 million available in the largest mobile app stores. One explanation for this growth could be the adoption of well-proven software engineering practices--in particular, software reuse despite the often conjectured lack of training among mobile app developers. A study of hundreds of thousands of Android apps across 30 different categories found substantial software reuse, indicating that while these apps benefit from increased productivity, they´re also more dependent on the quality of the apps and libraries that they reuse.

Keywords

Android (operating system); mobile computing; software libraries; software quality; software reusability; Android apps; app quality; library quality; mobile app developers; mobile app stores; software engineering practices; software reuse; Androids; Computer applications; Humanoid robots; Large-scale systems; Mobile communication; Mobile computing; Next generation networking; Smart phones; Software reusability; Android; mobile apps; software reuse;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Software, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0740-7459

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MS.2013.142

Filename

6663589