Dependency management bots in open-source systems-prevalence and adoption.

ABSTRACT: Bots have become active contributors in maintaining open-source repositories. However, the definitions of bot activity in open-source software vary from a more lenient stance encompassing every non-human contributions vs frameworks that cover contributions from tools that have autonomy or human-like traits (i.e., Devbots). Understanding which of those definitions are being used is essential to enable (i) reliable sampling of bots and (ii) fair comparison of their practical impact in, e.g., developers' productivity. This paper reports on an empirical study composed of both quantitative and qualitative analysis of bot activity. By analysing those two bot definitions in an existing dataset of bot commits, we see that only 10 out of 54 listed tools (mainly dependency manag

SUBMITTER: Erlenhov L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9044236 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature