Maintainability of the kernels of open-source operating systems: A comparison of Linux with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD

Submitted by msquire on Fri, 2011-04-22 10:51

Title	Maintainability of the kernels of open-source operating systems: A comparison of Linux with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD
Publication Type	Journal Article
Year of Publication	2006
Authors	Yu, L, Schach, SR, Chen, K, Heller, GZ, Offutt, J
Secondary Title	J. Syst. Softw.
Volume	79
Pagination	807–815
Date Published	June
Publisher	Elsevier Science Inc.
Place Published	New York, NY, USA
ISSN Number	0164-1212
Keywords	abiword, Common coupling, coupling, Definition-use analysis, freebsd, kernel, lines of code, linux, linux kernel, loc, Maintainability, modules, netbsd, Open-source software, openbsd, source code
Abstract	We compared and contrasted the maintainability of four open-source operating systems: Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. We used our categorization of common coupling in kernel-based software to highlight future maintenance problems. An unsafe definition is a definition of a global variable that can affect a kernel module if that definition is changed. For each operating system we determined a number of measures, including the number of global variables, the number of instances of global variables in the kernel and overall, as well as the number of unsafe definitions in the kernel and overall. We also computed the value of each our measures per kernel KLOC and per KLOC overall. For every measure and every ratio, Linux compared unfavorably with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Accordingly, we are concerned about the future maintainability of Linux.
Notes	"Data regarding the number and total number of lines of code of kernel and nonkernel modules in the four operating systems are provided in Table 1" loc, kloc, number of kernel modules, number of nonkernel modules size c files .h files
URL	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2005.08.014
DOI	10.1016/j.jss.2005.08.014
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