Supplementing Dependabot’svulnerability scanning : A Custom Pipeline for Tracing DependencyUsage in JavaScript Projects

Software systems are becoming increasingly complex, with developers frequentlyutilizing numerous dependencies. In this landscape, accurate tracking and understanding of dependencies within JavaScript and TypeScript codebases are vital formaintaining software security and quality. However, there exists a gap in how existing vulnerability scanning tools, such as Dependabot, convey information aboutthe usage of these dependencies. This study addresses the problem of providing amore comprehensive dependency usage overview, a topic critical to aiding developers in securing their software systems. To bridge this gap, a custom pipeline wasimplemented to supplement Dependabot, extracting the dependencies identified asvulnerable and providing specific information about their usage within a repository.The results highlight the pros and cons of this approach, showing an improvement inthe understanding of dependency usage. The effort opens a pathway towards moresecure software systems