Fine-grained Patches for Java Software Upgrades

Abstract: We present a novel methodology for deriving fine-grained patches of Java software. We consider an abstract-syntax tree (AST) representation of Java classes compiled to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) format, and a difference analysis over the AST representation to derive patches. The AST representation defines an appropriate abstraction level for analyzing differences, yielding compact patches that correlate modularly to actual source code changes. The approach contrasts to other common, coarse-grained approaches, like plain binary differences, which may easily lead to disproportionately large patches. We present the main traits of the methodology, a prototype tool called aspa that implements it, and a case-study analysis on the use of aspa to derive patches for the Java 2 SE API. The case-study results illustrate that aspa patches have a significantly smaller size than patches derived by binary differencing tools.