Detecting of Build Smells in Build Configurations

Build systems are widely used in today’s software projects to automate integration and build processes. Similar to source code, build configuration need to be maintained to avoid outdated configurations, and build breakage as a consequence. Recent work indicates that neglected build maintenance is one of the most frequently occurring reasons why builds break. The context of this topic is situated in finding methods and developing tools that support the developers and release engineers in improving the quality of their build configuration.

Code Smells are parts in Source Code files that are considered to need improvements in terms of code quality. Their detection is a common technique to identify areas in Source Code that need special attention in terms of the need to improve the code. Source Code Smells have been extensively studied in recent research and there are already tools that can detect Source Code smells. However, finding smells in Build Configurations has not been studied. The goal of this topic is to identify common smells in Build Configurations, to automate the identification process, and to study the impact of such smells on the build procedure.