Usage-Driven Software Library Evolution – ALIEN

Software systems development typically entails the use of external software libraries. Just like any software, libraries evolve to incorporate new features, bug fixes, security patches, and refactorings, and clients must stay up-to-date with the libraries they use to benefit from these improvements. This co-evolution relation between clients and libraries is central to software development in general, and to software ecosystems in particular. ALIEN will investigate how library developers can better understand and anticipate the impact of their changes on their clients and ecosystems to help them make informed and responsible decisions about the development and evolution of their library. The aim is to strike the right balance between ensuring that clients will be able to gracefully migrate to new versions, and still deliver added value in the form of functional and extra-functional improvements. We will develop new tools to assist developers in the evolution of their libraries.