On the relation between architectural smells and source code changes

Although architectural smells are one of the most studied type technical debt, their impact on maintenance effort has not been thoroughly investigated. Studying this would help to understand how much debt interest is being paid due existence architecture and can be calculated. This work a first attempt address issue by investigating relation between source code changes. Specifically, we study whether frequency size changes correlated with presence selected set smells. We detect using Arcan tool, which detects building dependency graph system analyzed then looking for typical structures The findings, based case 31 open-source Java systems, show that 87% commits present more in artifacts at least smell, likelihood changing increases number Moreover, there also evidence confirm change after introduction smell larger smelly artifacts. These findings hold true especially Medium–Large Large