Modularity Measurement and Evolution in Object-Oriented Open-Source Projects

Throughout the software evolution, several maintenance actions such as adding new features, fixing problems, improving the design might negatively or positively affect the software design quality. Quality degradation, if not handled in the right time, can accumulate and cause serious problems for future maintenance effort. In this work, we study the modularity evolution of two open-source systems by answering two main research questions namely: what measures can be used to measure the modularity level of software and secondly, did the modularity level for the selected open source software improves over time. By investigating the modularity measures, we have identified the main measures that can be used to measure software modularity. Based on our analysis, the modularity of these two systems is not improving over time.