Software ecosystems, i.e., collections of interdependent projects, have become prominent in software development as they allow developers to rely on external libraries to reuse functionality, thus leading to a significant increase in productivity. Alongside the benefits from reusing external libraries, challenges arise when depending on external components, such as keeping them up-to-date and risks of bugs or security issue propagation through dependencies. Such technical challenges are intertwined with social challenges w.r.t the communities maintaining these projects, e.g., contributors abandoning the projects. In order to understand the development and evolution of software ecosystems, and to provide methods and tools to facilitate their development, researchers mine information from software repositories such as version control systems, code reviews, bug tracking systems, archived communication between developers, and question and answer websites. The goal of the PhD is to improve development processes and collaboration in software ecosystems.
You will join the Software Engineering and Technology (SET) group of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). A successful PhD candidate is expected to:
- carry out research in the field of software ecosystem evolution and mining software repositories;
- develop and maintain tools for the validation of the research results, in cooperation with the other parties involved;
- contribute to the writing of scientific papers;
- present results at (international) conferences;
- finish a PhD thesis within four years;
- a small contribution to the teaching activities of the Software Engineering and Technology group may be asked.