Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems
Energy consumption has been gaining traction as yet another major concern that mainstream software developers must be aware of. It used to be mainly the focus of hardware designers and low level software developers, e.g., device driver developers. Nowadays, however, mostly due to the ubiquity of bat...
| Main Author: | MOURA, Irineu Martins de Lima |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | LIMA FILHO, Fernando José Castor de |
| Format: | masterThesis |
| Language: | eng |
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Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
2016
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https://repositorio.ufpe.br/handle/123456789/17809 |
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ir-123456789-178092018-11-19T17:55:20Z Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems MOURA, Irineu Martins de Lima LIMA FILHO, Fernando José Castor de http://lattes.cnpq.br/0498976091763685 http://lattes.cnpq.br/7310046838140771 Mineração de Repositório de Software. Consumo de Energia. GitHub Software Repository Mining. Energy-Aware. GitHub Energy consumption has been gaining traction as yet another major concern that mainstream software developers must be aware of. It used to be mainly the focus of hardware designers and low level software developers, e.g., device driver developers. Nowadays, however, mostly due to the ubiquity of battery-powered devices, any developer in the software stack must be prepared to deal with this concern. Thus, to be able to properly assist them and to provide guidance in future research it is crucial to understand how they have been handling this matter. This thesis aims to aid in this regard by exploring a set of software changes, i.e., commits, to obtain insights into actual solutions implemented by open source developers when dealing with energy consumption. We use as our main data source GITHUB, a source code hosting platform for collaborative development, and extract a sample of the available commits across several different projects. From this sample, we manually curate a set of energy-aware commits, that is, any commit that refers to a source code change where developers intentionally modify, or aim to modify, the energy consumption (or power dissipation) of a system or make it easier for other developers or end users to do so. We then apply a qualitative research method to extract recurring patterns of information and to group the commits that intend to save energy into categories. A small survey was also conducted to assess the quality of our analysis and to further expand our understanding of the changes. During our analysis we also cover different aspects of the commits. We observe that the majority of the changes (~47%) still target lower levels of the software stack, i.e., kernels, drivers and OS-related services, while application level changes encompass ~34% of them. We notice that developers may not always be certain of the energy consumption impact of their changes before actually performing them, among our dataset we identify several instances (~12%) of commits where developers show signs of uncertainty towards their change’s effectiveness. We also highlight the possible software quality attributes that may be favored over energy efficiency. Notably, we spot a few instances of commits where developers performed a change that would negatively impact the energy consumption of the system in order to fix a bug. It is also worth noting, we draw attention to a specific group of changes which we call "energy-aware interfaces". They add tuning knobs that can be used by developers or end users to control the energy consumption of an underlying component. O controle do consumo de energia tem ganhado cada vez mais atenção como outro tipo de interesse ao qual desenvolvedores de software devem estar atentos. Antes esse tipo de preocupação era principalmente o foco de designers de hardware e desenvolvedores de baixonível, como por exemplo, desenvolvedores de drivers de dispositivos. Entretanto, devido à ubiquidade de dispositivos dependentes de bateria, qualquer desenvolvedor deve estar preparado para enfrentar essa questão. Logo, entender como eles estão lidando com o consumo de energia é crucial para estarmos aptos a auxiliá-los e para prover uma direção adequada para pesquisas futuras. Com o intuito de ajudar nesse sentido, essa tese explora um conjunto de mudanças de software, isto é, commits, para entender melhor sobre os tipos de soluções que são implementadas de fato por desenvolvedores de código aberto quando os mesmos devem lidar com o consumo de energia. Nós utilizamos o GITHUB como nossa principal fonte de dados, uma plataforma de hospedagem de código fonte para o desenvolvimento colaborativo de projetos de software, e extraímos uma amostra dos commits disponíveis entre vários projetos diferentes. Dessa amostra, nós manualmente selecionamos um conjunto de commits "energy-aware", isto é, qualquer commit que se refere a uma modificação de código onde o desenvolvedor propositalmente modifica, ou intenciona modificar, o consumo de energia (ou a dissipação de potência) de um sistema ou torna mais fácil para que outros desenvolvedores ou usuários finais possam fazê-lo. Nós então aplicamos sobre esses commits um método de análise qualitativa para extrair padrões recorrentes de informação e para agrupar os commits que intencionam reduzir o consumo energético em categorias. Uma pequena pesquisa também foi realizada com os autores dos commits para avaliar a qualidade da nossa análise e para expandir nosso entendimento sobre as modificações. Nós também consideramos diferentes aspectos dos commits durante a análise. Observamos que a maioria das modificações (~47%) ainda se aplicam às mais baixas camadas de software, isto é, kernels e drivers, enquanto que mudanças a nível de aplicação compreendem ~34% do nosso conjunto de dados. Nós notamos que os desenvolvedores nem sempre estão seguros do impacto de suas modificações no consumo de energia antes de realizá-las, em nosso conjunto de dados identificamos várias instâncias de modificações (~12%) em que os desenvolvedores demonstram sinais de incerteza em relação à eficácia de suas mudanças. Também apontamos alguns dos possíveis atributos de qualidade de software que são favorecidos em detrimento do consumo de energia. Entre essas, destacamos alguns commits onde os desenvolvedores realizaram uma modificação que impactaria negativamente no consumo de energia com o intuito de consertar algum problema existente no software. Também achamos interessante ressaltar um grupo específico de modificações que chamamos de “interfaces energy-aware”. Elas adicionam controles no software em questão que possibilitam outros desenvolvedores ou usuários finais a ajustar o consumo de energia de algum componente subjacente. 2016-09-06T17:39:17Z 2016-09-06T17:39:17Z 2015-08-24 masterThesis https://repositorio.ufpe.br/handle/123456789/17809 eng Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Brazil http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/br/ Universidade Federal de Pernambuco UFPE Brasil Programa de Pos Graduacao em Ciencia da Computacao |
| institution |
REPOSITORIO UFPE |
| collection |
REPOSITORIO UFPE |
| language |
eng |
| topic |
Mineração de Repositório de Software. Consumo de Energia. GitHub Software Repository Mining. Energy-Aware. GitHub |
| spellingShingle |
Mineração de Repositório de Software. Consumo de Energia. GitHub Software Repository Mining. Energy-Aware. GitHub MOURA, Irineu Martins de Lima Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems |
| description |
Energy consumption has been gaining traction as yet another major concern that mainstream software developers must be aware of. It used to be mainly the focus of hardware designers and low level software developers, e.g., device driver developers. Nowadays, however, mostly due to the ubiquity of battery-powered devices, any developer in the software stack must be prepared to deal with this concern. Thus, to be able to properly assist them and to provide guidance in future research it is crucial to understand how they have been handling this matter. This thesis aims to aid in this regard by exploring a set of software changes, i.e., commits, to obtain insights into actual solutions implemented by open source developers when dealing with energy consumption. We use as our main data source GITHUB, a source code hosting platform for collaborative development, and extract a sample of the available commits across several different projects. From this sample, we manually curate a set of energy-aware commits, that is, any commit that refers to a source code change where developers intentionally modify, or aim to modify, the energy consumption (or power dissipation) of a system or make it easier for other developers or end users to do so. We then apply a qualitative research method to extract recurring patterns of information and to group the commits that intend to save energy into categories. A small survey was also conducted to assess the quality of our analysis and to further expand our understanding of the changes. During our analysis we also cover different aspects of the commits. We observe that the majority of the changes (~47%) still target lower levels of the software stack, i.e., kernels, drivers and OS-related services, while application level changes encompass ~34% of them. We notice that developers may not always be certain of the energy consumption impact of their changes before actually performing them, among our dataset we identify several instances (~12%) of commits where developers show signs of uncertainty towards their change’s effectiveness. We also highlight the possible software quality attributes that may be favored over energy efficiency. Notably, we spot a few instances of commits where developers performed a change that would negatively impact the energy consumption of the system in order to fix a bug. It is also worth noting, we draw attention to a specific group of changes which we call "energy-aware interfaces". They add tuning knobs that can be used by developers or end users to control the energy consumption of an underlying component. |
| author2 |
LIMA FILHO, Fernando José Castor de |
| format |
masterThesis |
| author |
MOURA, Irineu Martins de Lima |
| author_sort |
MOURA, Irineu Martins de Lima |
| title |
Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems |
| title_short |
Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems |
| title_full |
Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems |
| title_fullStr |
Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems |
| title_sort |
mining energy – aware commits: exploring changes performed by open – source developers to impact the energy consumption of software systems |
| publisher |
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://repositorio.ufpe.br/handle/123456789/17809 |
| _version_ |
1641987012424630272 |
| score |
13.657419 |