Replication Package of the Paper "Towards Better Understanding of Breaking Changes in the NPM Ecosystem"

Replication Package of the paper "Towards Better Comprehension of Breaking Changes in the NPM Ecosystem"

We describe the files in this replication package as follows.

collected_data folder:

This folder contains the our collected breaking changes from 381 sampled NPM projects. The files include:

1) sampled_projects.txt, the 381 projects we sampled.

2) original_breaking_commits.csv, the breaking commits obtained from the 381 projects.

3) breaking_commits_after_removal.csv, it contains the breaking commits after removing (1) non-JavaScript source code change, (2) contain very long commit messages over 10 lines.

RQ1 folder:

This folder contains the breaking changes used in RQ1.

1) documented_bc_can_be_detected.csv, it contains the breaking changes after removal, indicating whether a documented breaking change can be detected by test cases.

2) detected_bc_are_documented.csv, it contains the breaking changes sampled from all commits from 381 projects, indicating whether a detected breaking commit is documented by developers.

RQ2-3-4 folder:

This folder contains the breaking changes used in analysis process in RQ2, RQ3 and RQ4.

1) used_projects.csv, the projects that contain breaking changes.

2) analyzed_breaking_changes.csv, the analyzed breaking changes in RQ2 to 4. The breaking changes are annotated. For example, column “category” indicates the type of the breaking change, column “change_signature_type” is related to RQ2, column “change_behavior_type” is related to RQ3 and column “reason” is related to RQ4.