Maven Unzipped: Exploring the Impact of Library Packaging on the Ecosystem

MAVEN is a popular dependency management tool and ecosystem used by millions of developers. However, the over-whelming amount of available open-source software and the lack of proper ecosystem governance pose risks to the security and effectiveness of the ecosystem. This necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the ecosystem to guide future decision-making and promote effective practices. Despite numerous studies on aspects of Maven,such as vulnerabilities, breaking changes, and bloated dependencies, a knowledge gap concerning its overall state and health still exists. This gap impedes the adoption of effective practices, potentially impacting the productivity and efficiency of projects and the ecosystem as a whole. This paper explores the fundamental aspects of the Mavenecosystem. We investigate the packaging practices of Mavenlibraries with a focus on the content of the libraries, their impact on the ecosystem and each other, and their evolution over time. Our goal is to provide insights into the ecosystem's practices and trends. To achieve this, we create a scalable infrastructure and collect a comprehensive dataset of 480K unique packages by randomly selecting one version from each Mavenproject. We use this dataset to analyze the content of Mavenreleases and their packaging practices. We discover three concerning practices that deserve the community's attention: various data inconsistencies within Maven,improper use of Mavenarchives, and exponential dependency growth. We discuss practical recommendations to mitigate these issues, such as implementing stricter release checks and dependency minimization during deployments. To help promote more research, we open our dataset and tools for public use.