GemChecker: reporting on the status of gems in ruby on rails projects

Jamie Cleare; Claudia Iacob

doi:10.1109/ICSME.2018.00080

GemChecker: reporting on the status of gems in ruby on rails projects

Jamie Cleare, Claudia Iacob

School of Computing

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

299 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Ruby projects rely on gems, i.e. package libraries which provide a variety of features and functions. Once a package library has been installed onto an application, checking if it has become out of date or if it is poorly maintained can only be done manually for Ruby on Rails projects. This is both error prone and time consuming. Out of date gems can potentially introduce vulnerabilities that may only become obvious at a later stage. In this paper, we introduce GemChecker, a software tool designed to support Ruby on Rails developers in gaining knowledge about the version status of gems installed upon their application. GemChecker is designed to: a) allow queries of the latest version available for a gem, b) summarize the results of checking the versions of all the gems associated with a particular project, and c) support software maintenance tasks by alerting developers of code deprecation in gems used by a particular project, of new versions being released for particular gems, and when a gem used by a particular project is out of date.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages	700-704
Number of pages	5
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-5386-7870-1
ISBN (Print)	978-1-5386-7871-8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2018.00080
Publication status	Published - 12 Nov 2018
Event	34th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution: ICSME 2018 - Madrid, Spain Duration: 23 Sept 2018 → 29 Sept 2018 https://icsme2018.github.io/

Publication series

Name	IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)
Publisher	IEEE
ISSN (Print)	1063-6773
ISSN (Electronic)	2576-3148

Conference

Conference	34th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution
Country/Territory	Spain
City	Madrid
Period	23/09/18 → 29/09/18
Internet address	https://icsme2018.github.io/

Access to Document

10.1109/ICSME.2018.00080

ICSME18
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Accepted author manuscript (Post-print), 250 KB

Cite this

Cleare, J., & Iacob, C. (2018). GemChecker: reporting on the status of gems in ruby on rails projects. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) (pp. 700-704). (IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2018.00080

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title = "GemChecker: reporting on the status of gems in ruby on rails projects",

abstract = "Ruby projects rely on gems, i.e. package libraries which provide a variety of features and functions. Once a package library has been installed onto an application, checking if it has become out of date or if it is poorly maintained can only be done manually for Ruby on Rails projects. This is both error prone and time consuming. Out of date gems can potentially introduce vulnerabilities that may only become obvious at a later stage. In this paper, we introduce GemChecker, a software tool designed to support Ruby on Rails developers in gaining knowledge about the version status of gems installed upon their application. GemChecker is designed to: a) allow queries of the latest version available for a gem, b) summarize the results of checking the versions of all the gems associated with a particular project, and c) support software maintenance tasks by alerting developers of code deprecation in gems used by a particular project, of new versions being released for particular gems, and when a gem used by a particular project is out of date.",

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Cleare, J & Iacob, C 2018, GemChecker: reporting on the status of gems in ruby on rails projects. in 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., pp. 700-704, 34th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, Madrid, Spain, 23/09/18. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2018.00080

GemChecker: reporting on the status of gems in ruby on rails projects. / Cleare, Jamie; Iacob, Claudia.
2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2018. p. 700-704 (IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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GemChecker: reporting on the status of gems in ruby on rails projects

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