Analyzing the Evolution of Large‐Scale Software
Tom Mens, Juan F. Ramil, Michael W. Godfrey · Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution Research and Practice · 2004
Analyzing the Evolution of Large-Scale SoftwareThis special issue reports on approaches that address the issue of analyzing and visualizing the evolution of large-scale software.These approaches were discussed during the IEEE Workshop on Evolution of Large-Scale Industrial Software Evolution (ELISA), which was co-located with the International Conference on Software Maintenance in Amsterdam in September 2003.After a thorough review process, two articles have been selected for this special issue.The techniques proposed and illustrated in these articles allow us to gain a deeper insight into the nature of the evolution of large-scale software. THE WORKSHOPThe IEEE ELISA workshop was co-located with the International Conference on Software Maintenance in Amsterdam in September 2003.It was organized by Tom Mens, Juan F. Ramil, Michael W. Godfrey and Brian Down.The main theme of the workshop was planned to be the evolution of large-scale industrial software.Wider themes, such as the evolution of open source software, were also well represented in the workshop submissions.The goal was to achieve a deeper and wider insight into the problems posed by the evolution of software and the possible technological and managerial solutions.This goal is particularly relevant in current-day software practice, since size issues compound the challenges to achieving disciplined software evolution.Industrial and open-source software generally consist of numerous software artifacts that need to be evolved in a harmonious fashion, change requests that arrive more quickly than can be reasonably implemented, and the involvement of several teams implementing the evolution.Typical examples of large-scale software include air traffic control, popular PC operating systems, and telephone switch software.The challenges posed by the continual evolution of these and similar software clearly challenge the current state-of-the-art.In total, the ELISA workshop received 19 workshop submissions, nine of which were short papers and 10 were full papers: 15 of the submissions were classified as research papers, the remaining four as experience papers.One submission was rejected because it was considered as being of insufficient quality.