SBOM Challenges for Developers: From Analysis of Stack Overflow Questions

Wataru Otoda; Tetsuya Kanda; Yuki Manabe; Katsuro Inoue; Yoshiki Higo

doi:10.1109/SERA61261.2024.10685624

SBOM Challenges for Developers: From Analysis of Stack Overflow Questions

Software Engineering 2025-02-07 v1

Authors: Wataru Otoda , Tetsuya Kanda , Yuki Manabe , Katsuro Inoue , Yoshiki Higo

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Abstract

Current software development takes advantage of many external libraries, but it entails security and copyright risks. While the use of the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) has been encouraged to cope with this problem, its adoption is still insufficient. In this research, we analyzed the challenges that developers faced in practicing SBOM use by examining questions about SBOM utilization on Stack Overflow, a Q&A site for developers. As a result, we found that (1) the proportion of resolved questions about SBOM use is 15.0% which is extremely low, (2) the number of new questions has increased steadily from 2020 to 2023, and (3) SBOM users have three major challenges on SBOM tools.

Keywords

software engineering

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.03975,
  title  = {SBOM Challenges for Developers: From Analysis of Stack Overflow Questions},
  author = {Wataru Otoda and Tetsuya Kanda and Yuki Manabe and Katsuro Inoue and Yoshiki Higo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.03975},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures

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