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This study focuses on the process of updating and upgrading a large-scale legacy software system to ensure its compatibility with modern computing environments. The evolution and maintenance of legacy software pose significant challenges in software engineering, especially given the rapid advancements in technology, computing platforms, and dependent libraries. These challenges become even more pronounced when new systems are built upon existing open-source software, which may become outdated due to discontinued maintenance or lack of community support. In this work, we examine the problem from a sustainable computing perspective through the case study of the CyberWater project—an innovative cyberinfrastructure framework designed to support open data access and open model integration in water science and engineering. CyberWater is built on top of VisTrails, an open-source scientific workflow system. VisTrails has not been actively maintained since 2017, requiring an upgrade to ensure CyberWater’s continued functionality, compatibility, and long-term sustainability. This paper presents our work on upgrading VisTrails, including the complete upgrade process, tools developed and utilized, testing strategies, and the final outcomes. We also share key experiences and lessons learned, with a focus on the sustainability challenges and considerations that arise when maintaining and evolving large-scale open-source software systems in scientific computing environments.
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The Big Effects of Short-term Efforts: Mentorship and Code Integration in Open Source Scientific Software
Scientific progress relies crucially on software, yet in practice there are significant challenges to scientific software production and maintenance. We conducted a case study of a bioinformatics software library called Biopython to investigate the promise of Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a program that pays students to work on open-source projects for the summer, for addressing these challenges. We find three positive outcomes of GSoC in the Biopython community: the addition of new features to the Biopython codebase, training, and personal development. We also find, however, that mentors face several challenges related to GSoC project selection and ranking. We believe that because GSoC provides an occasion to extend the software with capabilities that can be used to produce new knowledge, and to train successive generations of potential contributors to the software, it can play a vital role in the sustainability of open-source scientific software.
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- PAR ID:
- 10038298
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of open research software
- ISSN:
- 2049-9647
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.5334/jors.bc
