Mining API Interactions to Analyze Software Revisions for the Evolution of Energy Consumption

TL;DR

This paper presents an approach to analyze the energy consumption evolution of mobile software revisions by examining their API interactions, providing a lightweight method for developers to understand energy implications of code changes.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel API interaction-based method to assess energy consumption evolution in software revisions, aiding mobile developers in energy-aware development.

Findings

API interactions effectively compare energy evolution across revisions

API-based analysis is lightweight and flexible

Initial results show promising correlation with energy consumption

Abstract

With the widespread use and adoption of mobile platforms like Android a new software quality concern has emerged -- energy consumption. However, developing energy-efficient software and applications requires knowledge and likewise proper tooling to support mobile developers. To this aim, we present an approach to examine the energy evolution of software revisions based on their API interactions. The approach stems from the assumption that the utilization of an API has direct implications on the energy being consumed during runtime. Based on an empirical evaluation, we show initial results that API interactions serve as a flexible, lightweight, and effective way to compare software revisions regarding their energy evolution. Given our initial results we envision that in future using our approach mobile developers will be able to gain insights on the energy implications of changes in source code in the course of the software development life-cycle.