research-article

Study and refactoring of Android asynchronous programming

Authors:

Danny DigAuthors Info & Claims

ASE '15: Proceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

Pages 224 - 235

https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE.2015.50

Published: 09 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

To avoid unresponsiveness, a core part of mobile development is asynchronous programming. Android provides several async constructs that developers can use. However, developers can still use the inappropriate async constructs, which result in memory leaks, lost results, and wasted energy. Fortunately, refactoring tools can eliminate these problems by transforming async code to use the appropriate constructs.

In this paper we conducted a formative study on a corpus of 611 widely-used Android apps to map the asynchronous landscape of Android apps, understand how developers retrofit asynchrony, and learn about barriers encountered by developers. Based on this study, we designed, implemented, and evaluated AsyncDroid, a refactoring tool which enables Android developers to transform existing improperly-used async constructs into correct constructs. Our empirical evaluation shows that AsyncDroid is applicable, accurate, and saves developers effort. We submitted 45 refactoring patches, and developers consider that the refactorings are useful.

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cover image ACM Conferences

ASE '15: Proceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

November 2015

935 pages

ISBN:9781509000241

General Chair:
Myra Cohen
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
,
Program Chairs:
Lars Grunske
University of Stuttgart, Germany
,
Michael Whalen
University of Minnesota

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IEEE Press

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Published: 09 November 2015

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ASE '15: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

November 9 - 15, 2015

Nebraska, Lincoln

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616261
Wu ZChen XLee S(2023)A systematic literature review on Android-specific smellsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2023.111677201:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2023.111677
Gregório NFernandes JBispo JMedeiros S(2022)E-APK: Energy Pattern Detection in Decompiled Android ApplicationsProceedings of the XXVI Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages10.1145/3561320.3561328(50-58)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3561320.3561328
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Tang YKhatchadourian RBagherzadeh MSingh RStewart ARaja A(2021)An Empirical Study of Refactorings and Technical Debt in Machine Learning SystemsProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00033(238-250)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
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Pan LCui BLiu HYan JWang SYan JZhang JDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)Static asynchronous component misuse detection for Android applicationsProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3409699(952-963)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
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