arXiv subjects

May Mahmoud

Publications and source records attributed to May Mahmoud.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

An Empirical Study of Model Context Protocol Applications

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) standardizes how large language model applications communicate with external tools, but leaves the application side unspecified: unlike traditional dependencies resolved through package managers, developers integrating MCP servers face no conventions for configuration, communication, or human oversight. This ecosystem is also under-researched, with existing work focused on servers rather than the applications consuming them. We conduct a large-scale study of 1,723 MCPApps mined from GitHub. We first derive MCPAppTax from a representative sample, then use an LLM-assisted pipeline to apply it across the full dataset, characterizing server integration across configuration, SDK use, and human-in-the-loop mechanisms. Our results show that the ecosystem has converged on some practices but not others: most MCPApps configure servers using files (85.2%) and use an official SDK (81.1%) to communicate with servers, yet no naming convention has emerged for configuration files. Human oversight diverges most, logging (90.8%) and enable/disable controls (77.2%) are common, but only 37.2% gate tool execution behind a blocking approval step, leaving the LLM able to invoke any enabled tool unconditionally in most MCPApps.

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arXiv2026

Four Years of GenAI: How Educators and Industry Adapted Their Assessment Strategies

GenAI's ability to solve a wide range of software engineering tasks is reshaping the software industry, raising the question of what an entry-level software engineer looks like today. In this work, we investigate whether the core skills for entry-level engineers have changed with GenAI and how the assessment of those skills has changed. Through two surveys, we consider both the educational and hiring perspectives, drawing on responses from 56 educators and 24 hiring professionals across diverse geographic regions to identify gaps and misaligned expectations. We find that educators frame their GenAI policies primarily around academic integrity, whereas GenAI use in industry is near-universal, with organizational policy governing how it should be used rather than whether to use it. Policies on GenAI use during interviews are still emerging, and respondents are split on whether they prefer candidates who demonstrate GenAI skills. Both populations are moving toward GenAI-resistant assessments built on observable real-time interactions and higher-order tasks, and both agree on which skills matter most, rating critical evaluation of AI-generated output, responsible and effective use of GenAI tools, and the ability to learn and adapt independently highly. However, they disagree on graduate readiness in these skills: hiring professionals report larger gaps, with the disagreement concentrated on foundational, non-GenAI-specific skills.

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arXiv2026

MigMate: A VS Code Extension for LLM-based Library Migration of Python Projects

Modern software relies heavily on third-party software libraries to streamline the development process. The act of switching one library for a similar counterpart, called library migration, naturally occurs as libraries become outdated or unsuitable for the project. Manually migrating from one library to another is a time-consuming task. Our previous research developed MigrateLib, a command-line LLM-based migration tool that can automate the complete migration process. In this paper, we present our open-source VS Code IDE plugin, MigMate, that builds on MigrateLib by integrating the automated migration process into the developer's existing development environment. MigMate provides an interactive experience, allowing developers to view and confirm changes before they are applied. A preliminary user study shows that plugin usage consistently reduces the time taken to complete a library migration task, and it scores highly on the System Usability Scale.

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arXiv2025

MigrateLib: a tool for end-to-end Python library migration

Library migration is the process of replacing a library with a similar one in a software project. Manual library migration is time consuming and error prone, as it requires developers to understand the Application Programming Interfaces (API) of both libraries, map equivalent APIs, and perform the necessary code transformations. Due to the difficulty of the library migration process, most of the existing automated techniques and tooling stop at the API mapping stage or support a limited set of libraries and code transformations. In this paper, we develop an end-to-end solution that can automatically migrate code between any arbitrary pair of Python libraries that provide similar functionality. Due to the promising capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in code generation and transformation, we use LLMs as the primary engine for migration. Before building the tool, we first study the capabilities of LLMs for library migration on a benchmark of 321 real-world library migrations. We find that LLMs can effectively perform library migration, but some post-processing steps can further improve the performance. Based on this, we develop MigrateLib, a command line application that combines the power of LLMs, static analysis, and dynamic analysis to provide accurate library migration. We evaluate MigrateLib on 717 real-world Python applications that are not from our benchmark. We find that MigrateLib can migrate 32% of the migrations with complete correctness. Of the remaining migrations, only 14% of the migration-related changes are left for developers to fix for more than half of the projects.

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arXiv2025

Byam: Fixing Breaking Dependency Updates with Large Language Models

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) facilitate the integration of third-party dependencies within the code of client applications. However, changes to an API, such as deprecation, modification of parameter names or types, or complete replacement with a new API, can break existing client code. These changes are called breaking dependency updates; It is often tedious for API users to identify the cause of these breaks and update their code accordingly. In this paper, we explore the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate client code updates in response to breaking dependency updates. We evaluate our approach on the BUMP dataset, a benchmark for breaking dependency updates in Java projects. Our approach leverages LLMs with advanced prompts, including information from the build process and from the breaking dependency analysis. We assess effectiveness at three granularity levels: at the build level, the file level, and the individual compilation error level. We experiment with five LLMs: Google Gemini-2.0 Flash, OpenAI GPT4o-mini, OpenAI o3-mini, Alibaba Qwen2.5-32b-instruct, and DeepSeek V3. Our results show that LLMs can automatically repair breaking updates. Among the considered models, OpenAI's o3-mini is the best, able to completely fix 27% of the builds when using prompts that include contextual information such as the buggy line, API differences, error messages, and step-by-step reasoning instructions. Also, it fixes 78% of the individual compilation errors. Overall, our findings demonstrate the potential for LLMs to fix compilation errors due to breaking dependency updates, supporting developers in their efforts to stay up-to-date with changes in their dependencies.

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arXiv2025

An Empirical Study of Python Library Migration Using Large Language Models

Library migration is the process of replacing one library with another library that provides similar functionality. Manual library migration is time consuming and error prone, as it requires developers to understand the APIs of both libraries, map them, and perform the necessary code transformations. Large Language Models (LLMs) are shown to be effective at generating and transforming code as well as finding similar code, which are necessary upstream tasks for library migration. Such capabilities suggest that LLMs may be suitable for library migration. Accordingly, this paper investigates the effectiveness of LLMs for migration between Python libraries. We evaluate three LLMs, Llama 3.1, GPT-4o mini, and GPT-4o on PyMigBench, where we migrate 321 real-world library migrations that include 2,989 migration-related code changes. To measure correctness, we (1) compare the LLM's migrated code with the developers' migrated code in the benchmark and (2) run the unit tests available in the client repositories. We find that LLama 3.1, GPT-4o mini, and GPT-4o correctly migrate 89%, 89%, and 94% of the migration-related code changes, respectively. We also find that 36%, 52% and 64% of the LLama 3.1, GPT-4o mini, and GPT-4o migrations pass the same tests that passed in the developer's migration. To ensure the LLMs are not reciting the migrations, we also evaluate them on 10 new repositories where the migration never happened. Overall, our results suggest that LLMs can be effective in migrating code between libraries, but we also identify some open challenges.

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