An exploratory study about extent of use of released packages in the Maven Central Repository

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Abstract

Maven Central Repository hosts over 9 million repositories which ease software reuse. Since its appearance, Maven has been studied and character- ized using different popularity and quality metrics, in order to identify defining patterns and possible improvements. This study aims to analyze extent of use of packages released in the Maven Central Repository. Extent of use is a metric that quanti- fies how much of a package is used. The findings of this study show that on average 73.2% of avail- able methods and 77.1% modules in a package are used by dependents of the package. The study also shows that extent of use at method level is highly correlated with extent of use at module level (Pear- son correlation coefficient r = 0.829).