Maintainability of the Linux kernel
Maintainability of the Linux kernel
复制标题
Linux内核的可维护性
DOI：
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Offutt
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Schach;Bo Jin;David R. Wright;G. Heller;A. Offutt
作者已经检查了365个版本的Linux。对于每个版本，他们统计了17个内核模块中的每个模块与该版本Linux中所有其他模块之间的公共（全局）耦合实例的数量。他们发现，公共耦合的实例数量随着版本号呈指数级增长。这一结果在99.99%的水平上是显著的，并且不需要额外的变量来解释这种增加。另一方面，每个内核模块中的代码行数仅随版本号线性增长。他们的结论是，除非Linux用最低限度的公共耦合进行重构，否则公共耦合引起的依赖关系将在未来的某个日期使Linux在不引起回归故障的情况下非常难以维护。
The authors have examined 365 versions of Linux. For every version, they counted the number of instances of common (global) coupling between each of the 17 kernel modules and all the other modules in that version of Linux. They found that the number of instances of common coupling grows exponentially with the version number. This result is significant at the 99.99% level, and no additional variables are needed to explain this increase. On the other hand, the number of lines of code in each kernel module grows only linearly with the version number. They conclude that, unless Linux is restructured with a bare minimum of common coupling, the dependencies induced by common coupling will, at some future date, make Linux exceedingly hard to maintain without inducing regression faults.