research-article

The discipline of preprocessor-based annotations does #ifdef TAG n't #endif matter

Authors:

Romero Malaquias,

Márcio Ribeiro,

Rodrigo Bonifácio,

Eduardo Monteiro,

Flávio Medeiros,

Alessandro Garcia,

Rohit GheyiAuthors Info & Claims

ICPC '17: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension

Pages 297 - 307

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPC.2017.41

Published: 20 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

The C preprocessor is a simple, effective, and language-independent tool. Developers use the preprocessor in practice to deal with portability and variability issues. Despite the widespread usage, the C preprocessor suffers from severe criticism, such as negative effects on code understandability and maintainability. In particular, these problems may get worse when using undisciplined annotations, i.e., when a preprocessor directive encompasses only parts of C syntactical units. Nevertheless, despite the criticism and guidelines found in systems like Linux to avoid undisciplined annotations, the results of a previous controlled experiment indicated that the discipline of annotations has no influence on program comprehension and maintenance. To better understand whether developers care about the discipline of preprocessor-based annotations and whether they can really influence on maintenance tasks, in this paper we conduct a mixed-method research involving two studies. In the first one, we identify undisciplined annotations in 110 open-source C/C++ systems of different domains, sizes, and popularity GitHub metrics. We then refactor the identified undisciplined annotations to make them disciplined. Right away, we submit pull requests with our code changes. Our results show that almost two thirds of our pull requests have been accepted and are now merged. In the second study, we conduct a controlled experiment. We have several differences with respect to the aforementioned one, such as blocking of cofounding effects and more replicas. We have evidences that maintaining undisciplined annotations is more time consuming and error prone, representing a different result when compared to the previous experiment. Overall, we conclude that undisciplined annotations should not be neglected.

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Cited By

Santos DSant`Anna CRibeiro M(2023)An Experiment on How Feature Dependent Variables Affect Configurable System ComprehensibilityProceedings of the 17th Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse10.1145/3622748.3622755(61-70)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622748.3622755
Bittner PSchultheiß AThüm TKehrer TYoung JLinsbauer LSpinellis DGousios GChechik MDi Penta M(2021)Feature trace recordingProceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3468264.3468531(1007-1020)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICPC '17: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension

May 2017

399 pages

ISBN:9781538605356

General Chair:
Giuseppe Scanniello
University of Basilicata, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
David Lo
Singapore Management University, Singapore
,
Alexander Serebrenik
Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society
SADIO: SADIO

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IEEE Press

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Published: 20 May 2017

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ICSE '17

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IEEE-CS
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ICSE '17: 39th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 20 - 28, 2017

Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Cited By

Santos DSant`Anna CRibeiro M(2023)An Experiment on How Feature Dependent Variables Affect Configurable System ComprehensibilityProceedings of the 17th Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse10.1145/3622748.3622755(61-70)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622748.3622755
Bittner PSchultheiß AThüm TKehrer TYoung JLinsbauer LSpinellis DGousios GChechik MDi Penta M(2021)Feature trace recordingProceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3468264.3468531(1007-1020)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3468264.3468531
de Oliveira BRibeiro Mda Costa JGheyi RAmaral Gde Mello ROliveira AGarcia ABonifácio RFonseca BCavalcante EDantas FBatista T(2020)Atoms of ConfusionProceedings of the XXXIV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3422392.3422437(243-252)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3422392.3422437
Oliveira RCafeo BHora AWeyns DPerrouin GWeyns D(2019)On the Evolution of Feature DependenciesProceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems10.1145/3302333.3302342(1-9)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3302333.3302342
Medeiros FLima GAmaral GApel SKästner CRibeiro MGheyi R(2019)An investigation of misunderstanding code patterns in C open-source software projectsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-018-9666-x24:4(1693-1726)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-018-9666-x
Rodrigues Santos ACarmo Machado ISantana De Almeida ESiegmund JApel S(2019)Comparing the influence of using feature-oriented programming and conditional compilation on comprehending feature-oriented softwareEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-018-9658-x24:3(1226-1258)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-018-9658-x
Araújo CZapalowski VNunes IKulesza UPrikladnicki RGerosa MWerner CAndrade R(2018)Using code quality features to predict bugs in procedural software systemsProceedings of the XXXII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3266237.3266271(122-131)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2018
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Börstler JStörrle HToll Dvan Assema JDuran RHooshangi SJeuring JKeuning HKleiner CMacKellar BSheard JKorhonen A(2018)"I know it when I see it" Perceptions of Code QualityProceedings of the 2017 ITiCSE Conference on Working Group Reports10.1145/3174781.3174785(70-85)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2018
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Fenske WSchulze SSaake G(2017)How preprocessor annotations (do not) affect maintainability: a case study on change-pronenessACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3170492.313605952:12(77-90)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
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Fenske WSchulze SSaake GFlatt MErdweg S(2017)How preprocessor annotations (do not) affect maintainability: a case study on change-pronenessProceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences10.1145/3136040.3136059(77-90)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
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