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Fragmentation is a serious problem in the Android ecosystem. This problem is mainly caused by the fast evolution of the system itself and the various customizations independently maintained by different smartphone manufacturers. Many…
With over 500,000 commits and more than 700 contributors, the Android platform is undoubtedly one of the largest industrial-scale software projects. This project provides the Android API, and developers heavily rely on this API to develop…
Many developers and organizations implement apps for Android, the most widely used operating system for mobile devices. Common problems developers face are the various hardware devices, customized Android variants, and frequent updates,…
Despite being one of the largest and most popular projects, the official Android framework has only provided test cases for less than 30% of its APIs. Such a poor test case coverage rate has led to many compatibility issues that can cause…
The Android ecosystem is profoundly fragmented due to the frequent updates of the Android system and the prevalent customizations by mobile device manufacturers. Previous research primarily focused on identifying and repairing…
Android has been the most popular smartphone system, with multiple platform versions (e.g., KITKAT and Lollipop) active in the market. To manage the application's compatibility with one or more platform versions, Android allows apps to…
Android apps are built on APIs that abstract core Android system functionalities. These APIs are officially documented in multiple files distributed with the Android source code or SDK, which we collectively refer to as Android API Lists…
The permission mechanism in the Android Framework is integral to safeguarding the privacy of users by managing users' and processes' access to sensitive resources and operations. As such, developers need to be equipped with an in-depth…
The increasing frequency of attacks on Android applications coupled with the recent popularity of large language models (LLMs) necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the capabilities of the latter in identifying potential…
Building Android applications reliably remains a persistent challenge due to complex dependencies, diverse configurations, and the rapid evolution of the Android ecosystem. This study conducts an empirical analysis of 200 open-source…
Mobile operating systems evolve quickly, frequently updating the APIs that app developers use to build their apps. Unfortunately, API updates do not always guarantee backward compatibility, causing apps to not longer work properly or even…
Android apps rely on application programming interfaces (APIs) to access various functionalities of Android devices. These APIs however are regularly updated to incorporate new features while the old APIs get deprecated. Even though the…
Android introduces a new permission model that allows apps to request permissions at runtime rather than at the installation time since 6.0 (Marshmallow, API level 23). While this runtime permission model provides users with greater…
XML configuration files are widely used in Android to define an app's user interface and essential runtime information such as system permissions. As Android evolves, it might introduce functional changes in the configuration environment,…
Security Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are crucial for ensuring software security. However, their misuse introduces vulnerabilities, potentially leading to severe data breaches and substantial financial loss. Complex API design,…
The fast-paced evolution of Android APIs has posed a challenging task for Android app developers. To leverage Android's frequently released APIs, developers must often spend considerable effort on API migrations. Prior research and Android…
Dealing with the evolution of operating systems is challenging for developers of mobile apps, who have to deal with frequent upgrades that often include backward incompatible changes of the underlying API framework. As a consequence of…
The Android platform introduces the runtime permission model in version 6.0. The new model greatly improves data privacy and user experience, but brings new challenges for app developers. First, it allows users to freely revoke granted…
The rapid development of Large Language Models (LLMs) has transformed software engineering, showing promise in tasks like code generation, bug detection, and compliance checking. However, current models struggle to detect compliance…
APIs are the primary mechanism for developers to gain access to externally defined services and tools. However, previous research has revealed API misuses that violate the contract of APIs to be prevalent. Such misuses can have harmful…