Write a Blog >>
MSR 2019
Sun 26 - Mon 27 May 2019 Montreal, QC, Canada
co-located with ICSE 2019

Maven artifacts are immutable: an artifact that is uploaded on Maven Central cannot be removed nor modified. The only way for developers to upgrade their library is to release a new version. Consequently, Maven Central accumulates all the versions of all the libraries that are published there, and applications that declare a dependency towards a library can pick any version. In this work, we hypothesize that the immutability of Maven artifacts and the ability to choose any version naturally support the emergence of software diversity within Maven Central. We analyze 1,487,956 artifacts that represent all the versions of 73,653 libraries. We observe that more than 30% of libraries have multiple versions that are actively used by latest artifacts. In the case of popular libraries, more than 50% of their versions are used. We also observe that more than 17% of libraries have several versions that are significantly more used than the other versions. Our results indicate that the immutability of artifacts in Maven Central does support a sustained level of diversity among versions of libraries in the repository.

Mon 27 May

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

09:40 - 10:30
Session III: APIs & Dependencies (Part 2)MSR 2019 Data Showcase / MSR 2019 Technical Papers at Place du Canada
Chair(s): Georgios Gousios TU Delft
09:40
6m
Talk
The Maven Dependency Graph: a Temporal Graph-based Representation of Maven Centra
MSR 2019 Data Showcase
Amine Benelallam , Nicolas Harrand , César Soto-Valero KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Benoit Baudry KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, Olivier Barais
Pre-print
09:46
15m
Full-paper
The Emergence of Software Diversity in Maven Central
MSR 2019 Technical Papers
César Soto-Valero KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Amine Benelallam , Nicolas Harrand , Olivier Barais , Benoit Baudry KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Pre-print
10:01
15m
Full-paper
Dependency Versioning in the Wild
MSR 2019 Technical Papers
Jens Dietrich Victoria University of Wellington, David J. Pearce Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Jacob Stringer , Amjed Tahir Massey University, Kelly Blincoe University of Auckland
Pre-print
10:16
15m
Full-paper
Splitting APIs: An Exploratory Study of Software Unbundling
MSR 2019 Technical Papers