Method Popularity Distributions of Software Artefacts within Maven Central

Abstract

Even though previous studies have studied software artefacts on a package level, little research has been done on a method level. In this work, we perform a method-level analysis to determine how popularity disperses among methods within software libraries of Maven Central. We analyse 384 software artefacts with three different metrics: eigenvector centrality, degree centrality and dependent usage percentage. Using callgraphs of the interactions of a software artefact with its dependents, we can determine the relative popularity score of any method. We observe that popularity is inverse logarithmically distributed among the most frequently used methods within a library. Furthermore, 80% of calls to a library are to 26% of all methods, following the Pareto Principle. Likewise, the number of dependents per artefacts also follows a power-law distribution. We also find that no significant correlation exists between any of the analysed metrics, allowing opportunities for future research to determine a more accurate popularity metric. All of our results show that method popularity is logarithmically distributed within software artefacts of Maven Central.