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: 1629186
• 负责人: Iulian Neamtiu
• 金额: $ 33.92万
• 依托单位: New Jersey Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1629186&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.

在发布第一个版本后，软件继续发展。在进化过程中，对源代码进行的更改可能没有预期的语义（修复错误，添加功能），这会对软件生产商和软件消费者产生负面影响，并且具有较高的经济成本。更一般而言，软件演化过程并不是很好的理解。 为了解决这种情况，这项工作将使用通过两种方式分析软件历史记录得出的信息。首先，要开发一种基于系统的方法，称为差分键入，可以在进行更改之前和之后就源代码的属性进行推理，并揭示开发时源代码更改的语义。 其次，为了构建一个声明性假设测试的框架，以自动化并简化了在软件演化中进行经验研究的过程，以及一般的软件工程。这项工作的跨学科基础将催化两个主要社区，编程语​​言和软件工程之间的交互。 这项研究的结果将使人们更好地了解软件如何发展，并改善软件演化过程。通过使软件更改的语义显式更改并在部署软件之前揭示某些类型的错误，请减少与软件错误和不正确软件更新相关的成本的发生率和成本。该项目将通过将重点从对假设的测试方式转变为正确的假设，从而改变研究人员进行经验软件演化研究的方式。 这些贡献将公开可用，这不仅将使研究社区，而且将使软件开发社区受益。这项工作的想法将纳入教育中，以便明天的毕业生可以更好地准备应对软件演化挑战。