Bridging the gap between technical and social dependencies with Ariadne

One of the reasons why large-scale software development is difficult is the number of dependencies that software engineers need to face; e.g., dependencies among the software components and among the development tasks. These dependencies create a need for communication and coordination that requires continuous effort by software developers. Empirical studies, including our own, suggest that technical dependencies among software components create social dependencies among the software developers implementing these components. Based on this observation, we developed Ariadne, a Java plug-in for Eclipse. Ariadne analyzes a Java project to identify program dependencies and collects authorship information about the project by connecting to a configuration management repository. Through this process, Ariadne can "translate" technical dependencies among software components into social dependencies among software developers. This paper describes the design of Ariadne, how it identifies technical dependencies among software components, how it extracts information from configuration management systems and, finally, how it translates this into social dependencies. Ariadne's purpose is to create a bridge between technical and social dependencies.

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