Exploring How Deprecated Python Library APIs Are (Not) Handled (Teaser, ESEC/FSE 2020)
"Exploring How Deprecated Python Library APIs Are (Not) Handled (Teaser, ESEC/FSE 2020)
Jiawei Wang, Li Li, Kui Liu, and Haipeng Cai
(Monash University, Australia; Monash University, Australia; Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China; Washington State University, USA)
Abstract: In this paper, we present the first exploratory study of deprecated Python library APIs to understand the status quo of API deprecation in the realm of Python libraries.
Specifically, we aim to comprehend how deprecated library APIs are declared and documented in practice by their maintainers, and how library users react to them.
By thoroughly looking into six reputed Python libraries and 1,200 GitHub projects, we experimentally observe that API deprecation is poorly handled by library contributors, which subsequently introduce difficulties for Python developers to resolve the usage of deprecated library APIs.
This empirical evidence suggests that our community should take immediate actions to appropriately handle the deprecation of Python library APIs.
Article: https://doi.org/10.1145/3368089.3409735
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0145-615X, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5224-9970
Submitted to the conference by JIawei Wang on 2020-11-01
Video Tags: Deprecated API, Deprecation, Python library, Evolution, fse20main-p467-p, DOI: 10.1145/3368089.3409735, ORCID: 0000-0003-0145-615X, ORCID: 0000-0002-5224-9970
Presentation at the ESEC/FSE 2020 conference, November 8–13, 2020, https://2020.esec-fse.org/
Sponsored by ACM SIGSOFT, https://www.sigsoft.org/
Twitter: / fseconf
Reddit: / esecfse "
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