Related papers: Can We Trust Tests To Automate Dependency Updates?…

Third-party dependency updates can cause a build to fail if the new dependency version introduces a change that is incompatible with the usage: this is called a breaking dependency update. Research on breaking dependency updates is active,…

The reliability of mobile devices is a challenge for vendors, since the mobile software stack has significantly grown in complexity. In this paper, we study how to assess the impact of faults on the quality of user experience in the Android…

Relying on dependency packages accelerates software development, but it also increases the exposure to security vulnerabilities that may be present in dependencies. While developers have full control over which dependency packages (and…

Automated third-party library analysis tools help developers by addressing key dependency management challenges, such as automating version updates, detecting vulnerabilities, and detecting breaking updates. Dependency reachability analysis…

Runtime introspection of dependencies, i.e., the ability to observe which dependencies are currently used during program execution, is fundamental for Software Supply Chain security. Yet, Java has no support for it. We solve this problem…

Industry practitioners are increasingly concerned with software that contains vulnerable versions of third-party dependencies that are included both directly and transitively. To address this problem, projects are encouraged to both…

Open-source software (OSS) dependencies are a dominant component of modern software code bases. Using proven and well-tested OSS components lets developers reduce development time and cost while improving quality. However, heavy reliance on…

Modern programming languages (e.g., Java and C#) provide features to separate error-handling code from regular code, seeking to enhance software comprehensibility and maintainability. Nevertheless, the way exception handling (EH) code is…

Researchers, students and practitioners often encounter a situation when the build process of a third-party software system fails. In this paper, we aim to confirm this observation present mainly as anecdotal evidence so far. Using a…

Developers rely on open-source packages and must review dependencies to safeguard against vulnerable or malicious upstream code. A careful review of all dependencies changes often does not occur in practice. Therefore, developers need…

Modern software systems are often built by leveraging code written by others in the form of libraries and packages to accelerate their development. While there are many benefits to using third-party packages, software projects often become…

API testing has increasing demands for software companies. Prior API testing tools were aware of certain types of dependencies that needed to be concise between operations and parameters. However, their approaches, which are mostly done…

AI coding agents increasingly modify real software repositories and make dependency decisions, including adding, removing, or updating third-party packages. These choices can materially affect security posture and maintenance burden, yet…

Understanding how software defects manifest and evolve in production environments is critical for improving reliability. While previous research has largely focused on pre-release defects, the nature of residual faults, i.e., those escaping…

JavaScript packages are notoriously prone to bloat, a factor that significantly impacts the performance and maintainability of web applications. While web bundlers and tree-shaking can mitigate this issue in client-side applications,…

Test effectiveness refers to the capability of a test suite in exposing faults in software. It is crucial to be aware of factors that influence this capability. We aim at inferring the causal relationship between the two factors (i.e.,…

Applications depend on libraries to avoid reinventing the wheel. Libraries may have incompatible changes during evolving. As a result, applications will suffer from compatibility failures. There has been much research on addressing…

This study investigates vulnerabilities in dependencies of sampled open-source software (OSS) projects, the relationship between these and overall project security, and how developers' behaviors and practices influence their mitigation.…

Build automation tools and package managers have a profound influence on software development. They facilitate the reuse of third-party libraries, support a clear separation between the application's code and its external dependencies, and…

Quality assurance (QA) tools are receiving more and more attention and are widely used by developers. Given the wide range of solutions for QA technology, it is still a question of evaluating QA tools. Most existing research is limited in…