On the Untriviality of Trivial Packages: An Empirical Study of npm JavaScript Packages

Nowadays, developing software would be unthinkable without the use of third-party packages. Although such code reuse helps to achieve rapid continuous delivery end-users, blindly reusing has its pitfalls. For example, prior work investigated rationale for using packages that implement simple functionalities, known as trivial (i.e., in terms size and complexity). This showed although these were simple, they popular prevalent npm ecosystem. popularity prevalence peaked our interest questioning ‘triviality packages’. To better understand examine triviality packages, we mine a large set JavaScript projects evaluate their relative centrality. Specifically, from two complementary points view: based on project usage ecosystem Our result shows are being used central files project. Additionally, by analyzing all external package API calls files, found high percentage attributed Therefore, play significant role files. Furthermore, dependency network, observed 16.8 percent some cases removing can impact approximately 29 Overall, finding indicates smaller complexity, highly depended projects. study might called trivial, nothing about is trivial.