A Case Study of Dependency Network for Building Packages: The Fedora Linux Distribution

Abstract

To port the Linux distributions to a new Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), developers have to rebuild the software packages of the distributions. The complex dependencies of the software packages bring a great challenge. It is important to understand and properly handle the dependencies. We selected Fedora, a typical Linux distribution, and studied the dependencies within the software repositories of aarch64 and x86_64 architecture. We proposed a package dependency network framework to study the roles played by different packages. We obtained three network dependency patterns and proposed the corresponding division strategies which help developer build the source packages in parallel. Our study reveals that the key packages located at the root of multiple dependency chains significantly impact the division of the network, and their builds should be prioritized. Meanwhile, some packages with external dependencies can be temporarily masked to make a sub-network independent. Furthermore, the network dependency patterns are also observed in Fedora 33 riscv64 and OpenEuler riscv64. Our findings can help researchers have a better knowledge of Linux distribution dependency network and help practitioners conduct efficient package builds.