How Do Developers Use Migration Guides? A Case Study of Log4j
For software developers and library maintainers, this work provides empirical insights into the usage patterns of migration guides, highlighting areas for improvement in guide design and accessibility.
The study investigates how migration guides are provided and used by developers, focusing on Log4j. Key findings include that 82.81% of references link to the entire guide rather than specific sections, and guides are used beyond major version updates for ongoing maintenance.
Migration guides are a form of software documentation that helps developers address breaking changes introduced in library version updates. Prior studies have examined documents such as release notes, API reference manuals, and patch notes. However, research that focuses specifically on migration guides remains limited. Improving the usability and coverage of migration guides is essential for helping developers resolve breaking changes efficiently. Yet, we still lack a clear understanding of how migration guides are currently provided and how developers use them in practice. To fill this gap, we first investigate whether libraries known to introduce incompatibilities provide migration guides. We then conduct a detailed case study on Log4j, a library that has experienced large-scale breaking updates in the past. We empirically analyze how developers refer to and use the official migration guide in real-world projects. We find that pull request authors most frequently reference the migration guide in the pull request description, and that most references (82.81\%) link to the entire guide rather than specific sections. We also find that developers use migration guides not only during major version updates but also during subsequent maintenance tasks, suggesting that the guides serve as a resource throughout the entire migration process.