On the maintainability of CRAN packages

[en] When writing software, developers are confronted with a trade-off between depending on existing components and reimplementing similar functionality in their own code. Errors may be inadvertently introduced because of dependencies to unreliable components, and it may take longer time to fix these errors. We study such issues in the context of the CRAN archive, a long-lived software ecosystem consisting of over 5000 R packages being actively maintained by over 2500 maintainers, with different flavors of each package depending on the development status and target operating system. Based on an analysis of package dependencies and package status, we present preliminary results on the sources of errors in these packages per flavor, and the time that is needed to fix these errors.

Research center :

CREMMI - Modélisation mathématique et informatique

Disciplines :

Computer science
Electrical & electronics engineering

Author, co-author :

Claes, Maelick ; Université de Mons > Faculté des Sciences > Génie Logiciel

Mens, Tom ; Université de Mons > Faculté des Sciences > Génie Logiciel

Grosjean, Philippe ; Université de Mons > Faculté des Sciences > Service d'Ecologie numérique

Language :

English

Title :

On the maintainability of CRAN packages

Publication date :

03 February 2014

Event name :

IEEE CSMR-WCRE 2014 Software Evolution Week

Event place :

Antwerpen, Belgium

Event date :

2014

Research unit :

S807 - Ecologie numérique
S852 - Génie Logiciel

Research institute :

R300 - Institut de Recherche en Technologies de l'Information et Sciences de l'Informatique
R150 - Institut de Recherche sur les Systèmes Complexes

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since 15 December 2013

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Bibliography

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