Speaker : Stefano Zacchiroli (Maître de Conférence, IRIF, Université Paris Diderot/INRIA/IRILL)
Title: Software Heritage: source code analysis at the scale of the world
Abstract:
The Software Heritage project has assembled the largest existing archive of publicly available software source code and associated development history, for more than 5 billion unique source code files and 1 billion unique commits, coming from more than 80 million development projects. In this talk we will review the project background, current status, and future directions with a focus on its research applications. In particular, we will discuss
(1) using the Software Heritage archive as a research object, allowing to study software evolution, patterns, and development dynamics at an unprecedented scale; and
(2) how Software Heritage is a fundamental building block for open science, and how it contributes to increasing accessibility and reproducibility of scientific source code. We will conclude the talk with a brief overview of the research challenges that need to be overcome to fulfill the Software Heritage mission.