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Documents authored by Medeiros, Flávio

Document
DOI: 10.4230/DARTS.1.1.7
The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study (Artifact)

Authors: Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi

Published in: DARTS, Volume 1, Issue 1, Special Issue of the 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015)

Abstract
This appendix presents detailed information about the research methods we used in the study, subject characterization, grounded theory process that we followed strictly, and the survey we performed in the study. It provides helpful data for understanding the subtler points of the companion paper and for reproducibility.
Cite as

Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi. The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study (Artifact). In Special Issue of the 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015). Dagstuhl Artifacts Series (DARTS), Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 7:1-7:32, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)

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@Article{medeiros_et_al:DARTS.1.1.7,
  author =	{Medeiros, Fl\'{a}vio and K\"{a}stner, Christian and Ribeiro, M\'{a}rcio and Nadi, Sarah and Gheyi, Rohit},
  title =	{{The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study (Artifact)}},
  pages =	{7:1--7:32},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Artifacts Series},
  ISSN =	{2509-8195},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{1},
  number =	{1},
  editor =	{Medeiros, Fl\'{a}vio and K\"{a}stner, Christian and Ribeiro, M\'{a}rcio and Nadi, Sarah and Gheyi, Rohit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DARTS.1.1.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-55162},
  doi =		{10.4230/DARTS.1.1.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: C Preprocessor, CPP, Interviews, Surveys, and Grounded Theory}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495
The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study

Authors: Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 37, 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015)

Abstract
The C preprocessor has received strong criticism in academia, among others regarding separation of concerns, error proneness, and code obfuscation, but is widely used in practice. Many (mostly academic) alternatives to the preprocessor exist, but have not been adopted in practice. Since developers continue to use the preprocessor despite all criticism and research, we ask how practitioners perceive the C preprocessor. We performed interviews with 40 developers, used grounded theory to analyze the data, and cross-validated the results with data from a survey among 202 developers, repository mining, and results from previous studies. In particular, we investigated four research questions related to why the preprocessor is still widely used in practice, common problems, alternatives, and the impact of undisciplined annotations. Our study shows that developers are aware of the criticism the C preprocessor receives, but use it nonetheless, mainly for portability and variability. Many developers indicate that they regularly face preprocessor-related problems and preprocessor-related bugs. The majority of our interviewees do not see any current C-native technologies that can entirely replace the C preprocessor. However, developers tend to mitigate problems with guidelines, even though those guidelines are not enforced consistently. We report the key insights gained from our study and discuss implications for practitioners and researchers on how to better use the C preprocessor to minimize its negative impact.
Cite as

Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi. The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study. In 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 37, pp. 495-518, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)

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@InProceedings{medeiros_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495,
  author =	{Medeiros, Fl\'{a}vio and K\"{a}stner, Christian and Ribeiro, M\'{a}rcio and Nadi, Sarah and Gheyi, Rohit},
  title =	{{The Love/Hate Relationship with the C Preprocessor: An Interview Study}},
  booktitle =	{29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2015)},
  pages =	{495--518},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-86-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{37},
  editor =	{Boyland, John Tang},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-52350},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2015.495},
  annote =	{Keywords: C Preprocessor, CPP, Interviews, Surveys, and Grounded Theory}
}
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