Authors
Runzhi He, Hao He, Yuxia Zhang, Minghui Zhou
Publication date
2023/5/22
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Volume
49
Issue
8
Pages
4004-4022
Publisher
IEEE
Description
Dependency management bots automatically open pull requests to update software dependencies on behalf of developers. Early research shows that developers are suspicious of updates performed by dependency management bots and feel tired of overwhelming notifications from these bots. Despite this, dependency management bots are becoming increasingly popular. Such contrast motivates us to investigate Dependabot, currently the most visible bot on GitHub, to reveal the effectiveness and limitations of state-of-art dependency management bots. We use exploratory data analysis and a developer survey to evaluate the effectiveness of Dependabot in keeping dependencies up-to-date, interacting with developers, reducing update suspicion, and reducing notification fatigue. We obtain mixed findings. On the positive side, projects do reduce technical lag after Dependabot adoption and developers are highly …
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