Detecting Architecture Debt in Micro-Service Open-Source Projects

A micro-service architecture emphasizes the use of subsystems that are small enough for changing them on the fly. Such architecture supports the continuous evolution of the system because individual services can be updated at different times, making system maintenance flexible. Consequently, the architecturally important properties of micro-services are constituted by service APIs that must be well maintained, with experimental, static, and deprecated versions clearly indicated. Like any software, micro-services can induce technical debt (TD) problems in service API, architecture and source code, if their quality and maintainability have not been asserted beforehand. This paper explores the relationship between TD and micro-services. Specifically, we investigate the role of architectural smells (AS) in open-source micro-service projects, where the architectural debt is principally recognized through the detection of architectural smells in the projects. As tools for this investigation, we used Arcan and Designite. The empirical data for the work is constituted by 20 open-source projects where we analyze the relationship between architecture smells and micro-services.