Related papers: Contracts in Practice
Software deployment can turn into a baffling problem when the components being deployed exhibit non-functional requirements. If the platform on which such components are deployed cannot satisfy their non-functional requirements, then they…
Agentic coding tools receive goals written in natural language as input, break them down into specific tasks, and write or execute the actual code with minimal human intervention. Central to this process are agent context files ("READMEs…
Exaggeration or context changes can render maintainability experience into prejudice. For example, JavaScript is often seen as least elegant language and hence of lowest maintainability. Such prejudice should not guide decisions without…
Existing techniques of Design by Contract do not allow software developers to specify complete contracts in many cases. Incomplete contracts leave room for malicious implementations. This article complements Design by Contract with a simple…
Smart contracts on a blockchain behave precisely as specified by their code. A vulnerability in this code can lead to unexpected behaviour, which is hard to fix because a blockchain does not allow to change smart contract code after its…
Contracts specifying a procedure's behavior in terms of pre- and postconditions are essential for scalable software verification, but cannot express any constraints on the events occurring during execution of the procedure. This…
Current code generation evaluation measures functional correctness on well-formed inputs that satisfy all input preconditions. This paradigm has a critical limitation: task descriptions often leave these preconditions implicit, while…
Modern systems operate in multiple contexts making variability a fundamental aspect of Configurable Software Systems (CSSs). Variability, implemented via pre-processor directives (e.g., #ifdef blocks) interleaved with other code and spread…
We present assume-guarantee contracts for continuous-time linear dynamical systems with inputs and outputs. These contracts are used to express specifications on the dynamic behaviour of a system. Contrary to existing approaches, we use…
In this paper, we study how object-oriented classes are used across thousands of software packages. We concentrate on "usage diversity'", defined as the different statically observable combinations of methods called on the same object. We…
Using dedicated software to represent or enact legislation or regulation has the advantage of solving the inherent ambiguity of legal texts and enabling the automation of compliance with legal norms. On the other hand, the so-called…
As a blockchain platform that has developed vigorously in recent years, Ethereum is different from Bitcoin in that it introduces smart contracts into blockchain.Solidity is one of the most mature and widely used smart contract programming…
Context: Use case (UC) descriptions are a prominent format for specifying functional requirements. Existing literature abounds with recommendations on how to write high-quality UC descriptions but lacks insights into (1) their real-world…
Smart contracts are computer programs that are executed by a network of mutually distrusting agents, without the need of an external trusted authority. Smart contracts handle and transfer assets of considerable value (in the form of…
For engineering software with formal correctness proofs it is crucial that proofs can be efficiently reused in case the software or its specification is changed. Unfortunately, in reality even slight changes in the code or its specification…
Annotations have been formally introduced into Java since Java 5. Since then, annotations have been widely used by the Java community for different purposes, such as compiler guidance and runtime processing. Despite the ever-growing use,…
During its lifetime, a program suffers several changes that seek to improve or to augment some parts of its functionality. However, these modifications usually also introduce errors that affect the already-working code. There are several…
Smart contracts have been increasingly used together with blockchains to automate financial and business transactions. However, many bugs and vulnerabilities have been identified in many contracts which raises serious concerns about smart…
Sketching is an important means of communication in software engineering practice. Yet, there is little research investigating the use of sketches. We want to contribute a better understanding of sketching, in particular its use during…
Contract conformance is hard to determine statically, prior to the deployment of large pieces of software. A scalable alternative is to monitor for contract violations post-deployment: once a violation is detected, the trace characterising…