Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Code Quality In Open and Closed Source Kernels

Posted by kdawson on from the tale-of-four-kernels dept.

Diomidis Spinellis writes "Earlier today I presented at the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering a research paper comparing the code quality of Linux, Windows (its research kernel distribution), OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD. For the comparison I parsed multiple configurations of these systems (more than ten million lines) and stored the results in four databases, where I could run SQL queries on them. This amounted to 8GB of data, 160 million records. (I've made the databases and the SQL queries available online.) The areas I examined were file organization, code structure, code style, preprocessing, and data organization. To my surprise there was no clear winner or loser, but there were interesting differences in specific areas. As the summary concludes: '..the structure and internal quality attributes of a working, non-trivial software artifact will represent first and foremost the engineering requirements of its construction, with the influence of process being marginal, if any.'"

2 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. I ran scripts on 8GB of data by ameboy · · Score: 0, Troll

    Then I realized it is rather pointless. That did not prevent me from presenting it anyway, after all most of the academia works this way. When I get out of the university, I will read and understand the code, maybe maintain it for a year, before judging its quality.

  2. TRANSLATION OF CONCLUSION: by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 0, Troll

    A Microsoft OS is shitty by design. It represents "first and foremost the engineering requirements of its construction" ...

    Therefore, it is designed to be the way it is.