Which Is Better For Reducing Outdated And Vulnerable Dependencies: Pinning Or Floating?
This program is tentative and subject to change.
Developers consistently use version constraints to specify acceptable versions of the dependencies for their project. \emph{Pinning} dependencies can reduce the likelihood of breaking changes, but comes with a cost of manually managing the replacement of outdated and vulnerable dependencies. On the other hand, \emph{floating} can be used to automatically get bug fixes and security fixes, but comes with the risk of breaking changes. Security practitioners advocate \emph{pinning} dependencies to prevent against software supply chain attacks, e.g., malicious package updates. However, since \emph{pinning} is the tightest version constraint, \emph{pinning} is the most likely to result in outdated dependencies. Nevertheless, how the likelihood of becoming outdated or vulnerable dependencies changes across version constraint types is unknown. \textit{The goal of this study is to aid developers in making an informed dependency version constraint choice by empirically evaluating the likelihood of becoming outdated or vulnerable dependencies across version constraint types at scale.} In this study, we first identify the trends in dependency version constraint usage and the patterns of version constraint type changes made by developers in the npm, PyPI, and Cargo ecosystems. We then modeled the dependency state transitions in survival analysis and estimated how the likelihood of becoming outdated or vulnerable changes when using \emph{pinning} as opposed to the rest of the version constraint types. We observe that among outdated and vulnerable dependencies, the most commonly used version constraint type is \emph{floating-minor}, with \emph{pinning} being the next most common. We also find that \emph{floating-major} is the least likely to result in outdated and \emph{floating-minor} is the least likely to result in vulnerable dependencies. Based on our findings, we recommend that developers use any kind of \emph{floating} constraint with lockfiles to balance the tradeoffs of \emph{pinning} and \emph{floating}.
This program is tentative and subject to change.
Mon 17 NovDisplayed time zone: Seoul change
11:00 - 12:40 | |||
11:00 10mTalk | LogMoE: Lightweight Expert Mixture for Cross-System Log Anomaly Detection Research Papers Jiaxing Qi Beihang University, Zhongzhi Luan Beihang University, Shaohan Huang Beihang University, Carol Fung Concordia University, Yuchen Wang Beihang University, Aibin Wang Beihang University, Hongyu Zhang Chongqing University, Hailong Yang Beihang University, China, Depei Qian Beihang University, China | ||
11:10 10mTalk | Improving LLM-based Log Parsing by Learning from Errors in Reasoning Traces Research Papers Wang Jialai National University of Singapore, Juncheng Lu Southeast University, Jie Yang Wuhan University, Junjie Wang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zeyu Gao Tsinghua University, Chao Zhang Tsinghua University, Zhenkai Liang NUS, Ee-Chien Chang School of Computing, NUS | ||
11:20 10mTalk | LogUpdater: Automated Detection and Repair of Specific Defects in Logging Statements Journal-First Track Renyi Zhong The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Yichen LI ByteDance, Jinxi Kuang The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Wenwei Gu The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Yintong Huo Singapore Management University, Singapore, Michael Lyu The Chinese University of Hong Kong | ||
11:30 10mTalk | LogAction: Consistent Cross-system Anomaly Detection through Logs via Active Domain Adaptation Research Papers Chiming Duan Peking University, Minghua He Peking University, Pei Xiao Peking University, Tong Jia Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China, Xin Zhang Peking University, Zhewei Zhong Bytedance, Xiang Luo Bytedance, Yan Niu Bytedance, Lingzhe Zhang Peking University, China, Yifan Wu Peking University, Siyu Yu The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), Weijie Hong Peking university, Ying Li School of Software and Microelectronics, Peking University, Beijing, China, Gang Huang Peking University | ||
11:40 10mTalk | Diplomatist: What Do Cross-language Dependencies Reflect Software Ecosystem Health? Research Papers Fanyi Meng Shenyang University of Technology, Ying Wang Northeastern University, Chun Yong Chong Monash University Malaysia, Hai Yu Northeastern University, China, Zhiliang Zhu Northeastern University, China | ||
11:50 10mTalk | Defects4Log: Benchmarking LLMs for Logging Code Defect Detection and Reasoning Research Papers Xin Wang Changsha University of Science and Technology, Zhenhao Li York University, Zishuo Ding The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) | ||
12:00 10mTalk | Which Is Better For Reducing Outdated And Vulnerable Dependencies: Pinning Or Floating? Research Papers Imranur Rahman North Carolina State University, Jill Marley North Carolina State University, William Enck North Carolina State University, Laurie Williams North Carolina State University | ||
12:10 10mTalk | On Automating Configuration Dependency Validation via Retrieval-Augmented Generation Research Papers Sebastian Simon Leipzig University, Alina Mailach Leipzig University, Johannes Dorn Leipzig University, Norbert Siegmund Leipzig University Pre-print | ||
12:20 10mTalk | CollaborLog: Efficient-Generalizable Log Anomaly Detection via Large-Small Model Collaboration in Software Evolution Research Papers Pei Xiao Peking University, Chiming Duan Peking University, Minghua He Peking University, Tong Jia Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China, Yifan Wu Peking University, Jing Xu ByteDance, Gege Gao ByteDance, Lingzhe Zhang Peking University, China, Weijie Hong Peking university, Ying Li School of Software and Microelectronics, Peking University, Beijing, China, Gang Huang Peking University | ||
12:30 10mTalk | On the Robustness Evaluation of 3D Obstacle Detection Against Specifications in Autonomous Driving Research Papers Tri Minh-Triet Pham Concordia University, Bo Yang Concordia University, Jinqiu Yang Concordia University | ||