Method Popularity Distributions of Software Artefacts within Maven Central

Method Popularity Distributions of Software Artefacts within Maven Central

Nulle, Thijs (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Keshani, M. (mentor)
Gerritsen, B.H.M. (graduation committee)
Proksch, S. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Computer Science and Engineering

CSE3000 Research Project

2022-06-21

Even though previous studies have studied software artefacts on a package level, little research has been done on a method level. In this work, we perform a method-level analysis to determine how popularity disperses among methods within software libraries of Maven Central. We analyse 384 software artefacts with three different metrics: eigenvector centrality, degree centrality and dependent usage percentage. Using callgraphs of the interactions of a software artefact with its dependents, we can determine the relative popularity score of any method. We observe that popularity is inverse logarithmically distributed among the most frequently used methods within a library. Furthermore, 80% of calls to a library are to 26% of all methods, following the Pareto Principle. Likewise, the number of dependents per artefacts also follows a power-law distribution. We also find that no significant correlation exists between any of the analysed metrics, allowing opportunities for future research to determine a more accurate popularity metric. All of our results show that method popularity is logarithmically distributed within software artefacts of Maven Central.

Popularity Distribution
Maven Central
Method Level Analysis
Software Artefact

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:dd813e67-8501-47e1-9774-a5a32c054e63

Student theses

bachelor thesis

© 2022 Thijs Nulle