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Common coupling as a measure of reuse effort in kernel-based software with case studies on the creation of MkLinux and Darwin

Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society volume 14, pages 45–55 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

An obstacle to software reuse is the large number of major modifications that frequently have to be made as a consequence of dependencies within the reused software components. In this paper, common coupling is categorized and used as a measure of the dependencies between software components. We compared common coupling in three operating systems, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mach, and related it to the reuse effort of these systems. The measure is evaluated by studying the creation of two operating systems, MkLinux which is based on the reuse of Linux and Mach, and Darwin which is based on the reuse of FreeBSD and Mach. We conclude that the way that common coupling is implemented in Linux kernel induces large dependencies between software components, which required more effort in order to be reused to produce MkLinux, while the common coupling implemented in the Mach and FreeBSD kernels induces few dependencies between software components, which required less effort in order to be reused to produce Darwin.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics Computer and Information Sciences Department, Indiana University South Bend, 46634, South Bend, IN, USA

    Liguo Yu

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  1. Liguo Yu
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The initial version of this paper appers in the 19th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Yu, L. Common coupling as a measure of reuse effort in kernel-based software with case studies on the creation of MkLinux and Darwin. J Braz Comp Soc 14, 45–55 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03192551

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03192551

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