A Mining-Software-Repository study on deprecated API usages in open-source Java software applications
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Context: A deprecated API ( Application Programming Interface ) is an API that its original developers no longer recommend using. Although deprecated APIs ( i.e., deprecated fields, methods, and classes) are still implemented, they are likely to be removed in future implementations. Consequently, developers are advised against using deprecated APIs in newly written code and are encouraged to update existing code to remove any deprecated API usage. Objective: We aimed to gather preliminary empirical evidence on deprecated API usages in open-source Java applications. Methods: To pursue such a goal, we conducted an exploratory Mining-Software-Repository ( MSR ) study in which we quantitatively analyzed the commit histories of 14 applications whose software projects were top-starred on GitHub. Results: The most important takeaway results of our study can be summarized as follows: (i) deprecated API usages are pretty widespread in the studied software applications; (ii) only in half of these applications, developers remove deprecated API usages as soon as possible; (iii) consuming their own deprecated APIs is a prevalent phenomenon in half of the studied applications; (iv) the introductions and removals of deprecated API usages are mostly due to changes performed by senior contributors; (v) developers mostly introduce and remove deprecated API usages when they are far from publishing a release version; and (vi) the introductions and removals of deprecated API usages are often undocumented in commit messages. Conclusion: The outcomes of our study suggest that developers should better handle deprecated API usages.
Institution: University of Salerno
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,830
OpenAlex ID: W4411114693