Estudo da evolução de arquivos de configuração e implicações na qualidade de projetos de software.

Abstract

Modern software development is highly dependent on tools and third-party dependencies. Pursuing the goal of easing integration and adaptation of such solutions to a wide range of clients, it's very common for those tools to offer custom configurations to its users. Related to the increase in the quantity of tools needed to develop modern applications, many projects face something called Configuration Hell. In this project, it's proposed an early investigation on the subject of the evolution of configuration files in open-source software repositories. Furthermore, it is proposed an early analysis into the correlation between the evolution in the quantity of configuration files and software metrics reported in the literature. Preliminary results show that, in fact, there was a sizeable increase in the number of configuration files over the years. Additionally, a correlation between the increase in the number of configuration files and some software metrics was identified, such as cognitive complexity. This project's results show the relevance of new studies for further understanding the real impact and consequences of this growth.