Porting Mobile Apps from iOS to Android: A Practical Experience

Table 1

Classification of the related mobile reverse-engineering techniques in terms of goal, target, method, extracted information, output, and validation.

Study	Goal	Target	Method	Technique	Extracted information	Output	Validation
Frank et al. [15]	Program Comprehension; Feature location	iOS; Android; Java ME	Static	Instrumentation; Code injection	Runtime behavior; Event sequence	Call graph; Report	Case study
Joorabchi and Mesbah [16]	Model recovery	iOS	Dynamic	Crawling; Event handling	Runtime behavior; User interface states	Finite state machine	Case study
Yang et al. [17]	Model recovery	Android	Hybrid	Crawling; Event handling; Parsing	Runtime behaviour; Event Sequence	Finite state machine	Case study; Comparison; Evaluation
Salva and Zafimiharisoa [18]	Verification and validation; Model recovery	Android	Dynamic	Crawling	Runtime behaviour; User interface states; Crash detection	Call graph; Finite state machine; Test suite	Comparison; Evaluation
Morgado et al. [19], 2014	Verification and validation; Pattern identification	Android	Hybrid	Crawling; Event handling; Parsing; Instrumentation	Runtime behaviour; Event sequence; Bugs	Call graph; Report; Test suite	Case study; Comparison
Nguyen and Csallner [20]	User interface identification	Mobile UI design	Static	Optical character recognition OCR; Event handling	User interface widgets; Computer vision	Android UI skeleton	Case study; Evaluation
Lamhaddab and Elbaamrani[21]	Porting	iOS	Static	Parsing; Graph modeling; Model transformation	Source code AST; User interface Widgets; User interface Sequences	Graph models for source platform (iOS); Graph models for target platform (Android)	Comparison; Evaluation
AmalFitano et al. [22]	Verification and validation; Model recovery	Android	Dynamic	Ripping; Instrumentation; Test Generation	Crash detection; Bugs	Call graph; Report; Test suite; Finite state machine	Case study; Comparison; Evaluation
Dugerdil and Sako [23]	Program comprehension; Maintenance	iOS	Static	Instrumentation; Code injection	Runtime behaviour; Event Sequence	Report	Case study; Evaluation
Salihu et al. [24]	Model recovery	Android	Hybrid	Crawling; Event handling; Parsing	Runtime behaviour; User interface states	Finite state machine	Comparison; Evaluation
Morgado and Paiva [25]	Verification and validation; Pattern identification	Android	Dynamic	Crawling; Event handling; Parsing	Runtime behaviour; Event sequence; Bugs	Call graph; Report; Test suite	Comparison; Evaluation
Chen et al. [26]	User interface identification	Mobile UI design	Static	Neural machine translator; Convolutional neural network (CNN); Recurrent neural network (RNN)	User interface widgets	Android UI skeleton	Case study; Evaluation
Beltramelli [28]	User interface identification	Mobile UI design	Static	Convolutional neural network (CNN); Recurrent neural network (RNN); DSL	User Interface Widgets	Android UI skeleton; iOS UI skeleton; Web-based U	Case study
Amalfitano et al. [30]	Verification and validation; Model Recovery	Android	Hybrid	Crawling; Instrumentation; Input event sequence; Machine learning	Runtime behavior; User interface states; Human involvement	Call graph; Finite state machine; Test suite; Report	Case study