A Metrics Based Framework to Improve Maintainability of Reusable Software Components through Versioning

Abstract

An improvement in maintainability of software components has the potential to affect the maintenance practices. The maintainers are more likely to follow the maintenance process that improves the maintainability of software components. The study presents a method that is intended to improve the maintainability of reusable software components. The study floats the idea of improving maintainability of reusable software components through versioning. It states that on creating a new version of a reusable software component, the maintainability increases. It validates the concept through case study conducted on open source software. The reason for taking open source software as case study is that their probability to be reused is more as compared to other software components. The study makes use of metrics to calculate maintainability and other factors that affect it. The study is also compared with other related studies to exhibit its contribution. Keywords: Maintainability index, versioning, cyclomatic complexity, metrics.