CAREER: Differential Types and Declarative Hypothesis Testing for Software Evolution

职业：软件演化的差异类型和声明性假设检验

• 批准号: 1149632
• 负责人: Iulian Neamtiu
• 金额: $ 49.82万
• 依托单位: University of California-Riverside
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-04-01 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1149632&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Differential; Types; Declarative; Hypothesis

Software continues to evolve long after the first version is released. Changes made to source code in the course of evolution might not have the intended semantics (fix bugs, add features), which negatively impacts both software producers and software consumers, and has high economic costs. More generally, the software evolution process is not very well understood. To remedy this situation, this work will use information derived from analyzing software history in two ways. First, to develop a type systems-based approach named differential typing, that enables reasoning about the properties of source code before and after a change has been made, and reveals the semantics of source code changes at development time. Second, to construct a framework for declarative hypothesis testing that automates and simplifies the process of conducting empirical studies in software evolution, and software engineering in general.The interdisciplinary foundation of this work will catalyze interaction between two primary communities, programming languages and software engineering. The results of this research will lead to a better understanding of how software evolves, and to improvements in the software evolution process. By making the semantics of software changes explicit and revealing certain kinds of errors before software is deployed, the incidence of, and costs associated with, software bugs and incorrect software updates are reduced. The project will transform the way researchers conduct empirical software evolution studies by shifting the focus from how hypotheses are tested to what the right hypotheses are. The contributions will be made publicly available, which will benefit not only the research community, but also the software development community. Ideas from this work will be incorporated into education, so that tomorrow's graduates are better prepared to tackle software evolution challenges.

在第一个版本发布后很长一段时间内，软件仍在不断发展。在演化过程中对源代码所做的更改可能不具有预期的语义（修复错误、添加功能），这对软件生产者和软件消费者都产生负面影响，并且经济成本很高。更一般地说，软件演化过程还不是很清楚。 为了解决这种情况，这项工作将以两种方式使用从分析软件历史中获得的信息。首先，开发一种名为差异类型的基于类型系统的方法，该方法可以推理更改前后的源代码属性，并揭示开发时源代码更改的语义。 其次，构建一个用于声明性假设检验的框架，该框架自动化并简化了软件演化和软件工程中进行实证研究的过程。这项工作的跨学科基础将促进编程语言和软件工程这两个主要社区之间的互动。 这项研究的结果将有助于更好地理解软件如何演化，并改进软件演化过程。通过明确软件变更的语义并在部署软件之前揭示某些类型的错误，可以减少软件错误和不正确的软件更新的发生率以及与之相关的成本。该项目将改变研究人员进行实证软件进化研究的方式，将重点从如何测试假设转移到什么是正确的假设。 这些贡献将公开发布，这不仅有利于研究界，也有利于软件开发界。这项工作的想法将被纳入教育中，以便明天的毕业生更好地准备应对软件发展的挑战。