Contract Usage and Evolution in Android Mobile Applications

Abstract

Contracts and assertions are effective methods to enhance software quality by enforcing preconditions, postconditions, and invariants. Previous research has demonstrated the value of contracts in traditional software development. However, the adoption and impact of contracts in the context of mobile app development, particularly of Android apps, remain unexplored.

To address this, we present the first large-scale empirical study on the use of contracts in Android apps, written in Java or Kotlin. We consider contract elements divided into five categories: conditional runtime exceptions, APIs, annotations, assertions, and other. We analyzed 2,390 Android apps from the F-Droid repository and processed more than 51,749 KLOC to determine 1) how and to what extent contracts are used, 2) which language features are used to denote contracts, 3) how contract usage evolves from the first to the last version, and 4) whether contracts are used safely in the context of program evolution and inheritance. Our findings include: 1) although most apps do not specify contracts, annotation-based approaches are the most popular; 2) apps that use contracts continue to use them in later versions, but the number of methods increases at a higher rate than the number of contracts; and 3) there are many potentially unsafe specification changes when apps evolve and in subtyping relationships, which indicates a lack of specification stability. Finally, we present a qualitative study that gathers challenges faced by practitioners when using contracts and that validates our recommendations.

Computer Scientist

My research interests include software reliability, software verification, and formal methods applied to software engineering. I am also interested in interactive storytelling. For more details, see some of my projects or my selected (or recent) publications. More posts are available in my blog. Follow me on Twitter or add me on LinkedIn.