How do APIs evolve? A story of refactoring

TLDR

Frameworks and libraries frequently change their APIs, making migration tedious and disruptive, and most updates are still performed manually despite some proposed tools. The study aims to understand the requirements for migration tools by examining API changes in four frameworks and one library. The authors analyzed the API changes across these frameworks and library to inform the design of migration tools. They found that most breaking changes are refactorings, with over 80% falling into this category, suggesting that refactoring‑based migration tools should be used. © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract Frameworks and libraries change their APIs. Migrating an application to the new API is tedious and disrupts the development process. Although some tools and ideas have been proposed to solve the evolution of APIs, most updates are done manually. To better understand the requirements for migration tools, we studied the API changes of four frameworks and one library. We discovered that the changes that break existing applications are not random, but tend to fall into particular categories. Over 80% of these changes are refactorings. This suggests that refactoring‐based migration tools should be used to update applications. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.