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How the Apache community upgrades dependencies: an evolutionary study

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Abstract

Software ecosystems consist of multiple software projects, often interrelated by means of dependency relations. When one project undergoes changes, other projects may decide to upgrade their dependency. For example, a project could use a new version of a component from another project because the latter has been enhanced or subject to some bug-fixing activities. In this paper we study the evolution of dependencies between projects in the Java subset of the Apache ecosystem, consisting of 147 projects, for a period of 14 years, resulting in 1,964 releases. Specifically, we investigate (i) how dependencies between projects evolve over time when the ecosystem grows, (ii) what are the product and process factors that can likely trigger dependency upgrades, (iii) how developers discuss the needs and risks of such upgrades, and (iv) what is the likely impact of upgrades on client projects. The study results—qualitatively confirmed by observations made by analyzing the developers’ discussion—indicate that when a new release of a project is issued, it triggers an upgrade when the new release includes major changes (e.g., new features/services) as well as large amount of bug fixes. Instead, developers are reluctant to perform an upgrade when some APIs are removed. The impact of upgrades is generally low, unless it is related to frameworks/libraries used in crosscutting concerns. Results of this study can support the understanding of the of library/component upgrade phenomenon, and provide the basis for a new family of recommenders aimed at supporting developers in the complex (and risky) activity of managing library/component upgrade within their software projects.

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Notes

  1. http://www.markosproject.eu

  2. http://projects.apache.org/doap.html

  3. An example of archive for the Ant project can be found here http://archive.apache.org/dist/ant/source

  4. http://ninka.turingmachine.org

  5. Note that we limit our analysis to developers we can detect through their activities in the versioning system, as also pointed out in Section 4.

  6. http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox

  7. https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/Dashboard.jspa

  8. http://www.bugzilla.org

  9. http://distat.unimol.it/reports/emse-apache

  10. Remember that we consider a developer “active” if she performed at least one commit in the previous six months.

  11. http://projects.apache.org/projects/ecs.html

  12. http://uima.apache.org

  13. http://db.apache.org/derby

  14. http://logging.apache.org/chainsaw

  15. http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-betwixt

  16. http://cocoon.apache.org

  17. http://commons.apache.org

  18. http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-compress

  19. In a small-world network most of the nodes are not neighbors of one another but most nodes can be reached from every other by passing a small number of edges (Watts and Strogatz 1998).

  20. http://tapestry.apache.org

  21. http://stanbol.apache.org

  22. http://tika.apache.org

  23. http://tinyurl.com/p3nxkyc

  24. http://mina.apache.org

  25. http://mina.apache.org/sshd-project

  26. http://tinyurl.com/nfrqfrf

  27. http://db.apache.org/torque/torque-4.0/index.html

  28. http://tinyurl.com/qjyw6u2

  29. http://roller.apache.org/

  30. http://tinyurl.com/qz254l8

  31. http://tinyurl.com/opmlu8z

  32. http://cxf.apache.org/

  33. http://accumulo.apache.org/

  34. http://tomcat.apache.org/

  35. http://sourceforge.net/

  36. The onion model is a socialization process where newcomers join a project by first contributing through mailing list discussions and bug trackers and they advance to more important roles contributing where they can improve the code and making design decisions

  37. API breaking changes would cause an application built with an older version of the component to fail under a newer version.

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Acknowledgments

Gabriele Bavota, Gerardo Canfora, Massimiliano Di Penta, and Sebastiano Panichella are partially funded by the EU FP7-ICT-2011-8 project Markos, contract no. 317743. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed herein are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of the sponsors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Sannio, Benevento (BN), Italy

    Gabriele Bavota, Gerardo Canfora, Massimiliano Di Penta & Sebastiano Panichella

  2. Department of Bioscience and Territory, University of Molise, Pesche (IS), Italy

    Rocco Oliveto

Authors
  1. Gabriele Bavota
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  2. Gerardo Canfora
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  3. Massimiliano Di Penta
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  4. Rocco Oliveto
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  5. Sebastiano Panichella
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gabriele Bavota.

Additional information

Communicated by: Yann Gaël Guéhéneuc and Tom Mens

This paper is an extended version of the paper: “Gabriele Bavota, Gerardo Canfora, Massimiliano Di Penta, Rocco Oliveto, Sebastiano Panichella: The Evolution of Project Inter-dependencies in a Software Ecosystem: The Case of Apache. 2013 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, ICSM 2013, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, September 22-28, 2013: 280-289, IEEE”

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Bavota, G., Canfora, G., Di Penta, M. et al. How the Apache community upgrades dependencies: an evolutionary study. Empir Software Eng 20, 1275–1317 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-014-9325-9

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