Evolvability Analysis Method for Open Source Software Systems

Abstract: Software systems evolve over the life span to accommodate changes in order to meet technical and business requirements. Evolution of open source software (OSS) is challenging because of involvement from a large number of independent teams and developers who make modifications in the systems according to their own requirements. It is required to evaluate these changes as these are being incorporated into the system against the long term evolvability objectives. This paper presents the analysis of the Hackystat, an OSS framework; against analyzability, changeability, extensibility, testability domain specific quality attributes. The analysis of the processes used during the development of the OSS systems is also discussed. On the basis of the analysis and the early research conducted to evaluate software evolvability, an evolvability analysis method for OSS evolution is presented in this report. Guidelines of the model suggest that the requirements identification and analysis, identification of the system components that are to be affected as a result of the change, identification and prioritization of the potential solutions, evaluation of the potential solutions with respect to evolvability characteristics, use of test driven development and automated build tools are the important steps that should be performed to evaluate system changes. Evolvability analysis model also suggests that the team which is responsible to for system overall architecture (project control group) should also evaluate changes submitted by different teams. A case study to modify a service oriented architecture bases system into software as a service cloud model following the guidelines of evolvability analysis model is also presented.