The talk discusses the importance of adopting static analysis in dependency tools to go beyond metadata analysis and improve the selection, security, and maintenance of open source dependencies.
- Plugins and dependency bots in package managers primarily rely on metadata analysis, which is insufficient for making quick decisions on security or performance bugs
- Static analysis at the source code level provides more accurate and comprehensive information on how projects use their dependencies
- Incorporating static analysis in dependency tools presents challenges but also brings new capabilities to package repository-level analytics
- The use of packet managers has improved software productivity and quality, but dependency management remains a complex challenge