The document discusses the visualization of system dependencies and library evolution to aid software maintenance and upgrades. It details the development of system-centric and library-centric dependency plots to analyze changes and opportunities within software libraries over time. The authors present real-world scenarios to illustrate how these visualizations can assist new maintainers in navigating library updates and dependency management.

1. VISSOFT2014,
Victoria, Canada
Visualizing the Evolution of Systems and their Library
Dependencies
Raula Gaikovina Kula, Coen De Roover, Daniel German, Takashi Ishio and Katsuro
Inoue
Osaka University,
Osaka, Japan
Vrije Universiteit Brussel,
Brussels, Belgium
Software Engineering Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University
University of Victoria,
Victoria, Canada

2. Building Systems with 3rd Party Software Libraries
MAVEN JVM Repository
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3. Why understand the evolution of system dependencies?
• Software Maintenance
– Patched vulnerabilities
– New features
• Roadblocks:
– Newbie to a project
– API Breakages
– Cannot identify opportunities for upgrade
– Current state of library
• Documentation, maintenance
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4. Motivation of the work
• Lessons from history
• Informed decision
• Adoption, Diffusion of Innovation, Popularity: ‘Wisdom of the crowd’
• We started with statistical plots, later then realized specialized plots are needed
• Journey in Visualization
1. System evolution history
2. Library evolution history
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5. Systems and Libraries
푳ퟏ
푳ퟐ
푺ퟏ 푺ퟐ 푺ퟑ
TIME
Library L
System S
Depends(S,L)
Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University
Library Centric
System Centric
푺ퟒ
Adopter Idler updater
(upgrader)
downgrader
(upgrader)
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6. System-centric Dependency Plot (SDP)
• Layout/Metaphor Design : Tree Rings
• Shape Design: Adopter types
• Color/Lines: Version rings
Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University
Usage at the current
version
Usage at that point in
time
푢푠푎푔푒푣푡
Library Version Usage= 푢푠푎푔푒푐푡
Usage is a count of
other systems that
have also adopted the
same library version
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7. System-centric Dependency Plot (SDP)
• Layout/Metaphor Design : Tree Rings
• Shape Design: Adopter types
• Color/Lines: Version rings
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8. Library-centric Dependency Plot (LDP)
• Layout/Metaphor Design: Time-series plot /Growth Curve
• Shape Design: Adopter types
• Color/Lines: Library Version
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9. Cognitive Walkthrough
• Rusty the new systems maintainer
• Through real-world examples
• Four scenarios
Rusty is a new maintainer to a software project. Rusty notices that some of the system's library dependencies are
outdated.
Simply upgrading to the latest versions of all dependencies seems natural, however, Rusty does not know where to
start.
How to help Rusty?
We extracted dependency information of systems and libraries
within the Maven Repository (2005-11 to 2013-11)
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10. Scenario Types
• To explore intuitive insights from these visualizations
• System Centric (SDP)
– S1. Regularity of updates
– S2. Structural dependency changes
• Library Centric (LDP)
– S3. Attractiveness of different library versions
– S4. Identify opportunities to updating
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11. Scenario 1: Regularity of dependency changes
OpenCMS System Findbugs System
Frequency of release times and risk of updating
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12. Scenario 1: Regularity of dependency changes
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13. Scenario 2: Structural dependency changes
Based on history consider:
what are more risker library types and associated libraries.
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14. Scenario 3 & 4
asm
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dom-4j
commons-lang
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15. Scenario 3: Attractiveness of different library versions
• asm
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16. Scenario 3: Attractiveness of different library versions
• commons-lang
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17. Scenario 3: Attractiveness of different library versions
• dom4-j
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18. Scenario 4: Opportunities to update
• asm
• Candidate versions are 3.3.1 and 4.1
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19. Scenario 4: Opportunities to update
• commons-lang
• candidate versions are 2.5 and 2.6
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20. Scenario 4: Opportunities to update
• dom4-j
• Dominant version is evident
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21. Discussion Points
• Generality – Granularity of our data, understanding the dataset
• Visual Scalability – Interactivity and reducing clutter of information
• Practicality – Incremental size of evolution data
• Ease of Use - Assessment by practitioners and researchers
• Additional Scenarios – Peeking on other systems, multiple libraries
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22. Summary and Future Work
• Towards the effective reuse of software libraries.
• System and Library Centric Views.
• 4 case scenarios with real world examples.
– Regularity, Structural Dependency changes,
– Attractive and Update Opportunities based on Usage.
• Current State: Feedback and Implementation
• Investigating co-existing matrix libraries
• Any questions/comments and feedback ……
http://sel.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/SARF/index.html.en
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