1.
On the Diversity of Software Package
Popularity Metrics: An Empirical
Study of npm
Ahmed Zerouali, Tom Mens, Gregorio Robles, Jesus Gonzalez
Barahona
The IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution
and Reengineering (SANER)
Hangzhou, China - February 24-27, 2019

2.
/Motivation

3.
/Motivation

4.
/Goal
How are metrics of package popularity related to each other?

5.
/Method/ Dataset
175,774 packages

6.
/Method/ 9 popularity metrics
# runtime dependent repositories (libraries.io)
# transitive runtime dependents (libraries.io)
# direct runtime dependents (npm and libraries.io)
# downloads (npm)
# npm stars (npm)
# github stars (GitHub)
# forks (GitHub)
# pull requests (GitHub)
# subscribers (GitHub)

7.
/Metrics Emanating From the Same Source

8.
/Metrics Emanating From the Same Source

9.
/Metrics Emanating From the Same Source

10.
/Metrics Emanating from Different Sources/ 6 metrics
# runtime dependent repositories (libraries.io)
# direct runtime dependents (npm and libraries.io)
# downloads (npm)
# npm stars (npm)
Aggarwal-Popularity = #forks + #stars + #pull requests² (GitHub)
# subscribers (GitHub)

11.
/Metrics Emanating from Different Sources/ 6 metrics

12.
/Metrics Emanating from Different Sources/ 6 metrics

13.
/Limitations
- There are other metrics not considered in the study (e.g. development
dependents, SoureRank (from libraries.io), etc)
- We focused only on packages that are hosted on GitHub.
- We focused only on one package repository, npm.

14.
/Conclusion
- Conducted analysis on the diversity of software popularity metrics.
- Popularity metrics are not strongly correlated, implying that the use of
different metrics may produce different outcomes.
- There is a need to define a measurement framework that takes into account
the diversity and context- dependence of software popularity.

15.
/Future Work
- Do a more fine grained survey on software popularity metrics.
- Consider concrete examples of studies and reproduce them using other
popularity metrics.
- Extend the analysis on other ecosystems.

16.
https://media.giphy.com/media/DUrdT2xEmJWbS/giphy.gif
Questions