apiwave: Keeping Track of API Popularity and Migration (ICSME 2015, Tool Demo Track)

Every day new frameworks and libraries are created and existing ones evolve. To benefit from such newer or improved APIs, client developers should update their applications. In practice, this process presents some challenges: APIs are commonly backward-incompatible (causing client applications to fail when updating) and multiple APIs are available (making it difficult to decide which one to use). To address these challenges, we propose apiwave, a tool that keeps track of API popularity and migration of major frameworks/libraries. The current version includes data about the evolution of top 650 GitHub Java projects, from which 320K APIs were extracted. We also report an experience using apiwave on real-world scenarios.

Transcript

1. apiwave: Keeping Track of API
   Popularity and Migration
   André Hora, Marco Tulio Valente
   !
   !
   !
   !
   !
   ICSME, 2015
   

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2. 2
   27.5M projects
   11.1M developers
   

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3. Software Evolution
   3
   In Eclipse, 42% of the methods
   in version 1.0 were not in 2.0
   [Mileva et al., 2011]
   [Mens et al., 2008]
   LOC evolution
   

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4. API Evolution
   4
   

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5. API Migration Q&A
   • Replacement for obsolete Hashtable class in Java (13K
   views): “When I tried to use the Hashtable class, Netbeans
   gave me an error. Any replacement suggestions?”
   5
   • Assert in junit.framework has been deprecated - what use
   next? (12K views): “I bump version of JUnit to 4.11 and get a
   warning. How and to what migrate?
   

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6. API Migration Q&A
   6
   • Replacing com.google.inject with javax.inject (5K views):
   “Is it true that javax.inject annotations can function as direct
   replacements for com.google.inject?
   • Replacement for java.net.URL (200 views): “I am looking for
   replacement for java.net.URL. The problem with current is that
   it can’t model protocols other than http, https, ftp, file, and jar”
   

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7. 7
   Fast evolution!
   Multiple libraries
   Similar services
   Which API should be
   used?
   Fast evolution!
   Code changes
   API changes
   Which API should be
   replaced?
   API Popularity API Migration
   Problems
   

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8. apiwave.com
   8
   650 Java projects (all commits)
   

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9. 9
   API Popularity
   Most used libraries!
   Most used packages!
   Most used interfaces!
   Usage over time
   API Migration
   Most migrated
   interfaces!
   Interface migration
   examples
   apiwave.com
   

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10. 10
    apiwave.com
    130K+ pageviews!
    (April-September/2015)
    

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11. 11
    apiwave.com
    Usage over time
    

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12. 12
    apiwave.com
    Usage over time Most used packages
    

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13. 13
    apiwave.com
    Usage over time Most used packages
    Most used interfaces
    

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14. 14
    apiwave.com
    Usage over time Most used packages
    Most used interfaces
    Migration and examples
    

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15. 15
    apiwave.com
    Usage over time Most used packages
    Most used interfaces
    Migration and examples
    

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16. 16
    apiwave.com
    

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17. 17
    apiwave.com
    

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18. apiwave.com
    Most migrated interfaces
    

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19. apiwave: Keeping Track of API
    Popularity and Migration
    André Hora, Marco Tulio Valente
    !
    !
    !
    !
    !
    ICSME, 2015
    apiwave.com
    

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