Mobile Applications Evolution

Abstract: Due to improved computing power, connectivity and interaction capability of mobile devices, their popularity and general acceptance in mass population has increased in recent years. Mobile applications are software systems running on mobile hand-held devices such as smart phones and tablets. Due to obvious differences in mobile applications, the evolution studies on them is of high importance. The primary objective is to study and compare the mobile applications evolution with the Lehman's laws of software evolution. Next is to identify and report how the software development team size influences mobile applications evolution. The study is conducted on 9 different open source mobile applications among which 5 were developed by single core developer and 4 were developed by multiple core developers. The selected projects' code repository is cloned into local copy and a number of tools are used on those repositories for extraction of relevant metrics from the artifacts. The Lehman laws are tested graphically, analytically and in some cases statistically. Six of the Lehman's laws are tested for validation in sample mobile applications. Among the six laws, I-Continuing Change is found supportive, III-Self Regulation and VI-Continuing Growth are found partial supportive in mobile applications. The II-Increasing complexity and V-Conservation of Familiarity are inconclusive. The IV-Conservation of Organizational Stability is not supportive in our sample mobile applications. Moreover, mobile applications are developed by a single or a few developers. Small team mobile projects have less time between releases compared to large team projects. The growth pattern of mobile applications is different than that predicted by Lehman laws.