An Initial Approach towards Measuring and Characterizing Software Evolution

This paper proposes a number of metrics to assess the maintainability of code. Dominance relations are used to express the complexity of call relations and an assumption is made that when more complex relations are present within a source code module it is harder for an application to be maintained. The paper describes a case study whereby the changes in dominance relations are investigated over versions of the software. Based on the changes to the relations, assumptions are made regarding the maintainability of the software. These assumptions are later verified by investigating change documentation and interviewing the maintainers. These results of this study seem to indicate that the dominance relations do reflect some principles of code maintainability.