An Exploratory Study of Exception Handling Behavior in Evolving Android and Java Applications

Previous work has shown that robustness-related issues like functional errors and app crashes rank among the most common causes for complaints about mobile phone apps. Since most Android applications are written in Java, exception handling is the main mechanism they employ to report and handle errors, similarly to standard Java applications. Thus, the proper use of this mechanism is closely linked to app robustness. Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, no previous study analyzed the relationship between source code changes and uncaught exceptions, a common cause of bugs in Android apps, nor whether exception handling code in these apps evolves in the same way as in standard Java applications. This paper presents an empirical study aimed at understanding the relationship between changes in Android programs and their robustness and comparing the evolution of the exception handling code in Android and standard Java applications.