An analysis of Java release practices on GitHub

This paper examines the release practices of Java Maven Repositories on GitHub. Most prior research in this vein has been done on Maven Central, the largest Maven package repository. However, GitHub hosts 15.5 million Java repositories, and is left untapped. Additionally of interest is the fact that GitHub provides a competitor to Maven Central,...

Effects of Artifact Age on Maven Dependency Resolution

This study conducts an investigation of the challenges faced by aging projects in Maven Central, focusing on the issue of missing dependencies. Using the Maven Explorer indexer, we systematically examine the correlation between the age of a project and the frequency of dependency resolution failures. Our analysis reveals a notable trend: older...

Uncovering the Secrets of the Maven Repository: Analysis of Library Sizes in Maven Central

This research explores the size variations of artifacts in Maven Central, a repository containing a large collection of Java artifacts. This analysis sheds light on the coding habits and dependency management ecosystems within Maven Central, emphasizing the importance of managing artifact sizes effectively. It also provides valuable insights to...

Uncovering Secrets of the Maven Repository: Maven packaging

Maven, a widely adopted software ecosystem for Java libraries, plays a critical role in the development and deployment of software applications. However, there exists a limited understanding of the composition and characteristics of the Maven repository, leaving users and contributors unaware of the contents they interact with. This research...

Analyzing the Criticality of Apache Maven Packages Through a Temporal Dependency Graph

Developers rely on different software to improve their efficiency as to reuse parts of code and be able to maintain it with ease, which is why open source software libraries have gained much pop- ularity over the past years. This paper analyzes what are the most used packages from Apache Maven, which is a build automation tool used primarily for...

Method Popularity Distributions of Software Artefacts within Maven Central

Even though previous studies have studied software artefacts on a package level, little research has been done on a method level. In this work, we perform a method-level analysis to determine how popularity disperses among methods within software libraries of Maven Central. We analyse 384 software artefacts with three different metrics:...

API evolution on Maven Central: do developers adhere to semantic versioning?

In this paper, we investigate whether developers of artifacts on Maven Central adhere to semantic versioning. We also investigate whether there is a link between violations in semantic versioning and the popularity of the violating method. Developers can violate semantic versioning by removing or altering methods in their API, which we refer to...