Related papers: A Large-Scale Empirical Study on Semantic Versioni…

Managing project dependencies is a key maintenance issue in software development. Developers need to choose an update strategy that allows them to receive important updates and fixes while protecting them from breaking changes. Semantic…

Large language models (LLMs) are now largely involved in software development workflows, and the code they generate routinely includes third-party library (TPL) imports annotated with specific version identifiers. These version choices can…

With the rise of the library ecosystem (such as NPM for JavaScript and PyPI for Python), a developer has access to a multitude of library packages that they can adopt as dependencies into their application.Prior work has found that these…

Large language models (LLMs) have developed rapidly in recent years, revolutionizing various fields. Despite their widespread success, LLMs heavily rely on external code dependencies from package management systems, creating a complex and…

Vulnerabilities from third-party libraries (TPLs) have been unveiled to threaten the Maven ecosystem. Despite patches being released promptly after vulnerabilities are disclosed, the libraries and applications in the community still use the…

Security vulnerabilities introduced by applications using third-party dependencies are on the increase, caused by the emergence of large ecosystems of libraries such as the NPM packages for JavaScript. Nowadays, libraries depend on each…

During the development of a software project, developers often need to upgrade third-party libraries (TPLs), aiming to keep their code up-to-date with the newest functionalities offered by the used libraries. In most cases, upgrading used…

The success of large language models for code relies on vast amounts of code data, including public open-source repositories, such as GitHub, and private, confidential code from companies. This raises concerns about intellectual property…

In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have been widely studied in the code translation field on the method, class, and even repository levels. However, most of these benchmarks are limited in terms of Third-Party Library (TPL)…

Generative Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in non-generative software maintenance tasks, such as fault localization (FL). Success in FL depends on a models ability to reason about program semantics beyond surface-level…

Maintaining traceability links between software release notes and corresponding development artifacts, e.g., pull requests (PRs), commits, and issues, is essential for managing technical debt and ensuring maintainability. However, in…

The latest breakthroughs in large language models (LLM) have empowered software development tools, such as ChatGPT, to aid developers in complex tasks. Developers use ChatGPT to write code, review code changes, and even debug their…

Context: Refactoring is recognized as an effective practice to maintain evolving software systems. For software libraries, we study how library developers refactor their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), especially when it impacts…

Modern software development depends on APIs to reuse code and increase productivity. As most software systems, these libraries and frameworks also evolve, which may break existing clients. However, the main reasons to introduce breaking…

Traceability links are key information sources for software developers, connecting software artifacts. Such links play an important role, particularly between contribution artifacts and their corresponding source code. Through these links,…

In Go, the widespread adoption of open-source software has led to a flourishing ecosystem of third-party dependencies, which are often integrated into critical systems. However, the reuse of dependencies introduces significant supply chain…

Automatic testing is a widely adopted technique for improving software quality. Software developers add, remove and update test methods and test classes as part of the software development process as well as during the evolution phase,…

Third-party libraries are a central building block to develop software systems. However, outdated third-party libraries are commonly used, and developers are usually less aware of the potential risks. Therefore, a quantitative and holistic…

Solidity, the dominant smart contract language for Ethereum, has rapidly evolved with frequent version updates to enhance security, functionality, and developer experience. However, these continual changes introduce significant challenges,…

Modern software systems, such as Spark, are usually written in multiple programming languages (PLs). Besides benefiting from code reuse, such systems can also take advantages of specific PLs to implement certain features, to meet various…