When App Stores Listen to the Crowd to Fight Bugs in the Wild

Maria Gomez (1) , Matias Martinez (1) , Martin Monperrus (1) , Romain Rouvoy (1)

1 SPIRALS - Self-adaptation for distributed services and large software systems

App stores are digital distribution platforms that put available apps that run on mobile devices. Current stores are software repositories that deliver apps upon user requests. However, when an app has a bug, the store continues delivering defective apps until the developer uploads a fixed version. Thus, impacting on the reputation of both store and app developer. In this paper, we envision a new generation of app stores that: (a) reduce human intervention to maintain mobile apps; and (b) enhance store services with smart and autonomous functionalities to automatically increase the quality of the delivered apps. We sketch a prototype of our envisioned app store and we discuss the functionalities that current stores can enhance by incorporating automatic software repair techniques.

Domaines: Génie logiciel [cs.SE]; Recherche d'information [cs.IR]

Maria Gomez, Matias Martinez, Martin Monperrus, Romain Rouvoy. When App Stores Listen to the Crowd to Fight Bugs in the Wild. 37th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), track on New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER), May 2015, Firenze, Italy. pp.4, ⟨10.1109/ICSE.2015.195⟩. ⟨hal-01105173⟩