Mining Component Repositories for Installability Issues

Component repositories play an increasingly relevant
role in software life-cycle management, from software
distribution to end-user, to deployment and upgrade management.
Software components shipped via such repositories are
equipped with rich metadata that describe their relationship (e.g.,
dependencies and conflicts) with other components.
In this practice paper we show how to use a tool, distcheck,
that uses component metadata to identify all the components in
a repository that cannot be installed (e.g., due to unsatisfiable
dependencies), provides detailed information to help developers
understanding the cause of the problem, and fix it in the
repository.
We report about detailed analyses of several repositories: the
Debian distribution, the OPAM package collection, and Drupal
modules. In each case, distcheck is able to efficiently identify not
installable components and provide valuable explanations of the
issues. Our experience provides solid ground for generalizing the
use of distcheck to other component repositories.