Exploring the Lifecycle and Maintenance Practices of Pre-Trained Models in Open-Source Software Repositories

Matin Koohjani; Diego Elias Costa

Exploring the Lifecycle and Maintenance Practices of Pre-Trained Models in Open-Source Software Repositories

Software Engineering 2025-04-09 v1

Authors: Matin Koohjani , Diego Elias Costa

Abstract

Pre-trained models (PTMs) are becoming a common component in open-source software (OSS) development, yet their roles, maintenance practices, and lifecycle challenges remain underexplored. This report presents a plan for an exploratory study to investigate how PTMs are utilized, maintained, and tested in OSS projects, focusing on models hosted on platforms like Hugging Face and PyTorch Hub. We plan to explore how PTMs are used in open-source software projects and their related maintenance practices by mining software repositories that use PTMs and analyzing their code-base, historical data, and reported issues. This study aims to provide actionable insights into improving the use and sustainability of PTM in open-source projects and a step towards a foundation for advancing software engineering practices in the context of model dependencies.

Keywords

pre-trained models open-source software software repositories Hugging Face PyTorch Hub maintenance practices lifecycle

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.06040,
  title  = {Exploring the Lifecycle and Maintenance Practices of Pre-Trained Models in Open-Source Software Repositories},
  author = {Matin Koohjani and Diego Elias Costa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.06040},
  year   = {2025}
}

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