BreakBot
Lina Ochoa, Thomas Degueule, Jean‐Rémy Falleri · 2022
"If we make this change to our code, how will it impact our clients?" It is difficult for library maintainers to answer this simple---yet essential!---question when evolving their libraries. Library maintainers are constantly balancing between two opposing positions: make changes at the risk of breaking some of their clients, or avoid changes and maintain compatibility at the cost of immobility and growing technical debt. We argue that the lack of objective usage data and tool support leaves maintainers with their own subjective perception of their community to make these decisions.