@Article{adams_2015:_empir_study_integ,
  author =	 {Adams, Bram and Kavanagh, Ryan and Hassan, Ahmed
		  E. and German, Daniel M.},
  title =	 {An Empirical Study of Integration Activities in
		  Distributions of Open Source Software},
  volume =	 21,
  number =	 3,
  pages =	 {960-1001},
  doi =		 {10.1007/s10664-015-9371-y},
  abstract =	 {Reuse of software components, either closed or open
		  source, is considered to be one of the most
		  important best practices in software engineering,
		  since it reduces development cost and improves
		  software quality. However, since reused components
		  are (by definition) generic, they need to be
		  customized and integrated into a specific system
		  before they can be useful. Since this integration is
		  system-specific, the integration effort is
		  non-negligible and increases maintenance costs,
		  especially if more than one component needs to be
		  integrated. This paper performs an empirical study
		  of multi-component integration in the context of
		  three successful open source distributions (Debian,
		  Ubuntu and FreeBSD). Such distributions integrate
		  thousands of open source components with an
		  operating system kernel to deliver a coherent
		  software product to millions of users worldwide. We
		  empirically identified seven major integration
		  activities performed by the maintainers of these
		  distributions, documented how these activities are
		  being performed by the maintainers, then evaluated
		  and refined the identified activities with input
		  from six maintainers of the three studied
		  distributions. The documented activities provide a
		  common vocabulary for component integration in open
		  source distributions and outline a roadmap for
		  future research on software integration.},
  date =	 {2015-03},
  issn =	 {1573-7616},
  journaltitle = {Empirical Software Engineering},
}