Evolving Collaboration, Dependencies, and Use in the Rust Open Source Software Ecosystem

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive dataset and analysis of the Rust open-source ecosystem, capturing developer collaborations, dependencies, and usage trends over seven years to facilitate large-scale ecosystem studies.

Contribution

It provides curated, longitudinal data on Rust developers, dependencies, and usage, enabling detailed analysis of ecosystem evolution and collaboration patterns.

Findings

Development of a 7-year dataset of Rust ecosystem activities

Insights into evolving developer collaboration networks

Analysis of dependency growth and usage trends

Abstract

Open-source software (OSS) is widely spread in industry, research, and government. OSS represents an effective development model because it harnesses the decentralized efforts of many developers in a way that scales. As OSS developers work independently on interdependent modules, they create a larger cohesive whole in the form of an ecosystem, leaving traces of their contributions and collaborations. Data harvested from these traces enable the study of large-scale decentralized collaborative work. We present curated data on the activity of tens of thousands of developers in the Rust ecosystem and the evolving dependencies between their libraries. The data covers seven years of developer contributions to Rust libraries and can be used to reconstruct the ecosystem's development history, such as growing developer collaboration networks or dependency networks. These are complemented by statistics on downloads and popularity, tracking the dynamics of use and success over time. Altogether the data give a comprehensive view of several dimensions of the ecosystem.