How Developers Handle Exceptions and Fix Exception Bugs in Mobile Apps?

EasyChair Preprint 15241

Abstract

Modern programming languages provide a mechanism for programmers to handle exceptions, i.e., unexpected errors occurring while a software system is running. However, learning to handle exceptions correctly is often challenging for mobile app developers due to the fast-changing nature of API frameworks for mobile systems and the insufficiency of API documentation and source code examples. Failing to catch and handle exceptions could leads to serious bugs and issues such as crashing, resource leaking, or causing negative end-user experiences. The goal of our paper is to present a thorough understanding about the nature of exception-related bugs and how developers handle exceptions and fix those bugs in mobile app environment. To that end, we first present a detailed empirical study on 246 exception-related bugs and fixes from 10 Android apps. Eight findings from the study suggest that handling exception has proven difficult and error-prone for many app developers. Our study suggests the need of tool support to help app developers become better in this task. Thus, we also performed another study on how professional app developers handle exceptions in 4000 high-quality Android apps. This study provides useful guidance and insights on building exception handling recommendation tools.

Keyphrases: Android apps, Software Maintenance and Evolution, exception handling, mobile app, software mining

@booklet{EasyChair:15241,
  author    = {Tam Nguyen and Tung Nguyen},
  title     = {How Developers Handle Exceptions and Fix Exception Bugs in Mobile Apps?},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 15241},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}