SHF: Large: Collaborative Research: Science and Tools for Software Evolution

SHF：大型：协作研究：软件演化的科学和工具

• 批准号: 1439957
• 负责人: Daniel Dig
• 金额: $ 168.21万
• 依托单位: Oregon State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-11-18 至 2018-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1439957&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Large; Collaborative; Research; Science

Successful software constantly evolves. Most programmers work on projects they did not start. Most companies spend more on maintaining old systems than on building new ones. This is good, because it shows that companies build software that is worth keeping and maintaining, but it also means that change is the heart of software development. Most programming tools treat change at a very low level: programmers make most changes with text editors, and tools tend to focus on changes to lines of text, and although programming is predominantly about change, contemporary tools do not provide direct support for understanding or facilitating change. This makes programming more expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone than it should be. This research project will develop a change-oriented programming environment (COPE) that supports change by putting transformations at the center of software development. COPE will enable both average and expert programmers to write, script, modify, and replay their own transformations. COPE will enable programmers to think about programs as compositions of transformations, and to automate as many of these transformations as possible. Characterizing software development in terms of transformations is an essential step to take software engineering from manual development to automated (or semi-automated) development of software.By enabling programmers to express their programming tasks as program transformations, COPE will alter the way programmers think about, teach, create, reuse, and understand programs. Specifically, COPE considers five activities: (1) analyze what changes programmers typically make and how they perceive, recall, and communicate changes, (2) automate transformations to make it easier to apply and script changes, (3) develop tools that compose and manipulate transformations to make it easier to reuse them, (4) integrate transformations with version control to provide better ways for archiving and understanding changes, and (5) develop tools that infer higher-level transformations from lower-level changes. COPE will deliver a rich transformation-aware toolset that synergistically integrates all these activities. COPE aims to (a) change the way people program, (b) create a platform for research for future research, and (c) produce results that ultimately will become standard software development practice. The PIs will disseminate the results through presentations, books, publications, open-source code, industrial collaborations, and educational activities. A version of COPE will be used to revamp the software engineering curriculum at the University of Illinois and the University of Texas to emphasize the science of change in large code bases.

成功的软件是不断进化的。大多数程序员从事的项目都不是他们开始的。大多数公司花在维护旧系统上的钱比花在建设新系统上的钱还多。这很好，因为它表明公司构建的软件值得保留和维护，但这也意味着更改是软件开发的核心。大多数编程工具在很低的级别上处理更改：程序员使用文本编辑器进行大多数更改，而工具往往专注于文本行的更改，尽管编程主要与更改有关，但当代工具并不为理解或促进更改提供直接支持。这使得编程变得比应有的更昂贵、更耗时、更容易出错。这个研究项目将开发一个面向变化的编程环境(COPE)，通过将转换放在软件开发的中心来支持变化。COPE将使普通程序员和专家程序员都能够编写、编写脚本、修改和重播他们自己的转换。COPE将使程序员能够将程序视为转换的组合，并尽可能多地使这些转换自动化。从转换的角度描述软件开发是将软件工程从手工开发转向自动化(或半自动)软件开发的关键一步。通过使程序员能够将他们的编程任务表达为程序转换，COPE将改变程序员思考、教学、创建、重用和理解程序的方式。具体而言，COPE考虑了五项活动：(1)分析程序员通常进行的更改以及他们如何感知、回想和传达更改；(2)自动化转换以使更改更易于应用和编写脚本；(3)开发组成和操作转换的工具以使其更易于重用；(4)将转换与版本控制相集成以提供更好的方法来存档和理解更改；以及(5)开发从较低级别的更改推断较高级别的转换的工具。COPE将提供丰富的转型感知工具集，协同集成所有这些活动。COPE的目标是(A)改变人们编程的方式，(B)为未来的研究创建一个研究平台，以及(C)产生最终将成为标准软件开发实践的结果。PIS将通过演讲、书籍、出版物、开放源码、行业合作和教育活动来传播结果。将使用COPE的一个版本来修改伊利诺伊大学和德克萨斯大学的软件工程课程，以强调大型代码库中的变化科学。