[2406.11363] A Preliminary Study on Self-Contained Libraries in the NPM Ecosystem
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Computer Science > Software Engineering

arXiv:2406.11363 (cs)
[Submitted on 17 Jun 2024]

Title:A Preliminary Study on Self-Contained Libraries in the NPM Ecosystem

Authors:Pongchai Jaisri, Brittany Reid, Raula Gaikovina Kula
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Abstract:The widespread of libraries within modern software ecosystems creates complex networks of dependencies. These dependencies are fragile to breakage, outdated, or redundancy, potentially leading to cascading issues in dependent libraries. One mitigation strategy involves reducing dependencies; libraries with zero dependencies become to self-contained. This paper explores the characteristics of self-contained libraries within the NPM ecosystem. Analyzing a dataset of 2763 NPM libraries, we found that 39.49\% are self-contained. Of these self-contained libraries, 40.42\% previously had dependencies that were later removed. This analysis revealed a significant trend of dependency reduction within the NPM ecosystem. The most frequently removed dependency was babel-runtime. Our investigation indicates that the primary reasons for dependency removal are concerns about the performance and the size of the dependency. Our findings illuminate the nature of self-contained libraries and their origins, offering valuable insights to guide software development practices.
Comments: Contains 6 pages, 5 figures. This research paper has been accepted by 22nd IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Management and Applications (SERA 2024)
Subjects: Software Engineering (cs.SE)
ACM classes: D.2.7
Cite as: arXiv:2406.11363 [cs.SE]
  (or arXiv:2406.11363v1 [cs.SE] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.11363

Submission history

From: Pongchai Jaisri [view email]
[v1] Mon, 17 Jun 2024 09:33:49 UTC (628 KB)
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