Navigating Open‐Source Serverless Frameworks: An Empirical Analysis of Issues and their Underlying Causes
Muhammad Hamza, Muhammad Waseem, Muhammad Azeem Akbar, Kari Smolander, Tommi MikkonenContext
Serverless computing, also referred to as Function‐as‐a‐Service (FaaS), has revolutionized application development by abstracting the management of underlying infrastructure. Accordingly, the software industry frequently adopts open‐source serverless frameworks such as OpenFaaS and Apache OpenWhisk for greater portability and flexibility. However, this adaptability often introduces a range of development and operational issues during application development.
Objective
To this end, this study aims to develop an empirically grounded understanding of the issues encountered when developing applications with open‐source serverless frameworks, their underlying causes, and the relationships between them.
Method
We conducted an empirical investigation of 3550 closed issue reports from 12 open‐source serverless frameworks.
Results
Our analysis led to the development of a comprehensive taxonomy of 261 issue types and 158 underlying cause types that developers encounter when developing applications with these frameworks. The findings revealed that Development Workflow, Release Workflow and Containerization, and System Configuration and Interoperability are the leading categories of issues, whereas Improper Development and Execution Practices, Missing Components and Critical Features, and Mismanagement of Versioning and Variables are the most prevalent underlying causes of these issues. We further develop an issue–cause mapping that links observed issues to their underlying causes and identify which issues are most strongly shaped by the serverless execution model.
Conclusion
Finally, we discuss implications for researchers and practitioners, propose actionable tooling directions derived from the issue–cause mapping, and outline future research directions based on the findings of this study.