SoL Mantra: Visualizing Update Opportunities Based on Library Coexistence
Boris Todorov, Raula Gaikovina Kula, Takashi Ishio, Katsuro Inoue · 2017
In software development, software reuse has become a pivotal factor in creating and providing high-quality software at a reduced cost. The reuse of a code creates dependencies, which as they increase over time become difficult to manage and avoid compatibility issues or bugs. With newer version releases, come various quality improvements, new features and issue fixes, but deciding whether or not to adopt those is a difficult task for large software with a lot of dependencies. To address those difficulties, we propose SoL Mantra which is a tool that shows update opportunities by leveraging the Wisdom of the Crowd in a software ecosystem. Using this combined knowledge, our tool displays information about the complexity of each update opportunity. The orbital layout provides the means to visualize the update opportunities and demonstrate its merits by showcasing two examples from the JavaScript ecosystem. Through these examples, we demonstrate how maintainers can benefit from SoL Mantra's visual cues.