ModuleGuard:Understanding and Detecting Module Conflicts in Python Ecosystem

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zhu, Ruofan, Wang, Xingyu, Liu, Chengwei, Xu, Zhengzi, Shen, Wenbo, Chang, Rui, Liu, Yang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Zhu, Ruofan
Wang, Xingyu
Liu, Chengwei
Xu, Zhengzi
Shen, Wenbo
Chang, Rui
Liu, Yang
author_facet Zhu, Ruofan
Wang, Xingyu
Liu, Chengwei
Xu, Zhengzi
Shen, Wenbo
Chang, Rui
Liu, Yang
contents Python has become one of the most popular programming languages for software development due to its simplicity, readability, and versatility. As the Python ecosystem grows, developers face increasing challenges in avoiding module conflicts, which occur when different packages have the same namespace modules. Unfortunately, existing work has neither investigated the module conflict comprehensively nor provided tools to detect the conflict. Therefore, this paper systematically investigates the module conflict problem and its impact on the Python ecosystem. We propose a novel technique called InstSimulator, which leverages semantics and installation simulation to achieve accurate and efficient module extraction. Based on this, we implement a tool called ModuleGuard to detect module conflicts for the Python ecosystem. For the study, we first collect 97 MC issues, classify the characteristics and causes of these MC issues, summarize three different conflict patterns, and analyze their potential threats. Then, we conducted a large-scale analysis of the whole PyPI ecosystem (4.2 million packages) and GitHub popular projects (3,711 projects) to detect each MC pattern and analyze their potential impact. We discovered that module conflicts still impact numerous TPLs and GitHub projects. This is primarily due to developers' lack of understanding of the modules within their direct dependencies, not to mention the modules of the transitive dependencies. Our work reveals Python's shortcomings in handling naming conflicts and provides a tool and guidelines for developers to detect conflicts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_02090
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ModuleGuard:Understanding and Detecting Module Conflicts in Python Ecosystem
Zhu, Ruofan
Wang, Xingyu
Liu, Chengwei
Xu, Zhengzi
Shen, Wenbo
Chang, Rui
Liu, Yang
Software Engineering
65-04
D.2; K.6.3
Python has become one of the most popular programming languages for software development due to its simplicity, readability, and versatility. As the Python ecosystem grows, developers face increasing challenges in avoiding module conflicts, which occur when different packages have the same namespace modules. Unfortunately, existing work has neither investigated the module conflict comprehensively nor provided tools to detect the conflict. Therefore, this paper systematically investigates the module conflict problem and its impact on the Python ecosystem. We propose a novel technique called InstSimulator, which leverages semantics and installation simulation to achieve accurate and efficient module extraction. Based on this, we implement a tool called ModuleGuard to detect module conflicts for the Python ecosystem. For the study, we first collect 97 MC issues, classify the characteristics and causes of these MC issues, summarize three different conflict patterns, and analyze their potential threats. Then, we conducted a large-scale analysis of the whole PyPI ecosystem (4.2 million packages) and GitHub popular projects (3,711 projects) to detect each MC pattern and analyze their potential impact. We discovered that module conflicts still impact numerous TPLs and GitHub projects. This is primarily due to developers' lack of understanding of the modules within their direct dependencies, not to mention the modules of the transitive dependencies. Our work reveals Python's shortcomings in handling naming conflicts and provides a tool and guidelines for developers to detect conflicts.
title ModuleGuard:Understanding and Detecting Module Conflicts in Python Ecosystem
topic Software Engineering
65-04
D.2; K.6.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.02090