Google has published the results of a study on the time engineers spend updating open-source packages used in the company's internal products. The data is based on a survey of 346 Google employees involved in package updates. Questions focused on how much time an engineer invests in preparing a new version of a package and whether the associated labor costs can be predicted using metrics for assessing the complexity of maintaining the source code.
In most cases, preparing an update took up to 4 hours, but in some situations, the process extended over days or even months. The main indicators of complexity affecting labor costs for maintenance were identified as having separately maintained patches not submitted to upstream, the number of dependencies for the package, and the size of the developer community in the upstream project. In 49% of cases, delays in preparing the update were attributed to the need to adapt their patches to changes in new releases; in 37%, to the introduction of incompatible changes in the upstream project; in 31%, to incompatible changes in Google’s code; and in 29%, to the overall complexity of the package.
Source: opennet.ru
