A Tool for Quantum Software Evolution.

Quantum computing is rapidly advancing, but quantum software development faces significant challenges, including a steep learning curve, high hardware error rates, and a lack of mature engineering practices. This study conducts a large-scale mining analysis of over 21,000 GitHub repositories, containing 1.2 million commits from more than 10,000 developers, to examine the evolution and maintenance of quantum software. We analyze repository growth, programming language and framework adoption, and contributor trends, revealing a 200 % increase in repositories and a 150 % rise in contributors since 2017. Additionally, we investigate software development and maintenance practices, showing that perfective commits dominate (51.76 %), while the low occurrence of corrective commits ( $\mathbf{1 8. 5 4 \%}$ ) indicates potential gaps in bug resolution. Furthermore, 34% of reported issues are quantum-specific, highlighting the need for specialized debugging tools beyond conventional software engineering approaches. This study provides empirical insights into the software engineering challenges of quantum computing, offering recommendations to improve development workflows, tooling, and documentation. We are also open-sourcing our dataset to support further analysis by the community and to guide future research and tool development for quantum computing. The dataset is available at: https://github.com/kriss-u/QRepoAnalysis-Paper.Quantum computing is rapidly advancing, but quantum software development faces significant challenges, including a steep learning curve, high hardware error rates, and a lack of mature engineering practices. This study conducts a large-scale mining analysis of over 21,000 GitHub repositories, containing 1.2 million commits from more than 10,000 developers, to examine the evolution and maintenance of quantum software. We analyze repository growth, programming language and framework adoption, and contributor trends, revealing a 200 % increase in repositories and a 150 % rise in contributors since 2017. Additionally, we investigate software development and maintenance practices, showing that perfective commits dominate (51.76 %), while the low occurrence of corrective commits ($\mathbf{1 8. 5 4 \%}$) indicates potential gaps in bug resolution. Furthermore, 34% of reported issues are quantum-specific, highlighting the need for specialized debugging tools beyond conventional software engineering approaches. This study provides empirical insights into the software engineering challenges of quantum computing, offering recommendations to improve development workflows, tooling, and documentation. We are also open-sourcing our dataset to support further analysis by the community and to guide future research and tool development for quantum computing. The dataset is available at: https://github.com/kriss-u/QRepoAnalysis-Paper.

arXiv:2501.06894IEEE International Conference on Quantum Software (QSW)Jul 7, 20252 citations

The Quantum Software Engineering Path.

Ricardo Pérez‐Castillo, Mario G. Piattini

Jan 1, 20201 citation

First International Workshop on Quantum SoftwareEngineering: The Next Evolution (QSE-NE) Summary 2024

Arif Ali Khan, Muhammad Azeem Akbar, Peng Liang

As we enter the new quantum age, tech giants like IBM, Google, and Microsoft are leading the way. But, there is a major challenge: we need to turn exciting quantum possibilities into real, practical tools. That's where Quantum Software Engineering (QSE) comes in, and it's why "Quantum Software Engineering: The next Evolution (QSE-NE)" workshop is proposed. This workshop is conducted to help guide this change. It aims to highlight the latest ideas in QSE and get people from different fields talking, from university researchers to big tech companies. Our main goals were to share new QSE methods, tools, and studies and to tackle the tough problems we face in developing quantum software. This workshop is all about setting the direction for the future of building quantum software, at a time when it is really crucial. More details can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/qse-ne/ home.As we enter the new quantum age, tech giants like IBM, Google, and Microsoft are leading the way. But, there is a major challenge: we need to turn exciting quantum possibilities into real, practical tools. That's where Quantum Software Engineering (QSE) comes in, and it's why "Quantum Software Engineering: The next Evolution (QSE-NE)" workshop is proposed. This workshop is conducted to help guide this change. It aims to highlight the latest ideas in QSE and get people from different fields talking, from university researchers to big tech companies. Our main goals were to share new QSE methods, tools, and studies and to tackle the tough problems we face in developing quantum software. This workshop is all about setting the direction for the future of building quantum software, at a time when it is really crucial. More details can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/qse-ne/ home.

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering NotesOct 3, 20240 citations

Dynamic Software Visualization of Quantum Algorithms with Rainbow Boxes

Jean-Baptiste Lamy

Quantum computing has emerged recently as a new computational paradigm. It considers quantum bits (qubits) instead of classical bits. However, quantum algorithms are often very difficult to understand. In this paper, we propose a tool for quantum software visualization. It presents visually the state of multiple-qubits and its evolution at runtime during the execution of a quantum program. This tool allows a unique representation of a quantum state, contrary to the usual vector notation. We show how the problem of visualizing a quantum state can be reduced to a set visualization problem, and our tool uses rainbow boxes to visualize the resulting sets. We also present the application of the proposed tool to quantum teleportation, an algorithm of high importance in cryptography. Finally, we discuss the limit of this approach and its perspectives, in particular for teaching quantum computing.Quantum computing has emerged recently as a new computational paradigm. It considers quantum bits (qubits) instead of classical bits. However, quantum algorithms are often very difficult to understand. In this paper, we propose a tool for quantum software visualization. It presents visually the state of multiple-qubits and its evolution at runtime during the execution of a quantum program. This tool allows a unique representation of a quantum state, contrary to the usual vector notation. We show how the problem of visualizing a quantum state can be reduced to a set visualization problem, and our tool uses rainbow boxes to visualize the resulting sets. We also present the application of the proposed tool to quantum teleportation, an algorithm of high importance in cryptography. Finally, we discuss the limit of this approach and its perspectives, in particular for teaching quantum computing.

International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP)Jan 1, 20195 citations

\mathbf{1 8. 5 4 \%}

) indicates potential gaps in bug resolution. Furthermore, 34% of reported issues are quantum-specific, highlighting the need for specialized debugging tools beyond conventional software engineering approaches. This study provides empirical insights into the software engineering challenges of quantum computing, offering recommendations to improve development workflows, tooling, and documentation. We are also open-sourcing our dataset to support further analysis by the community and to guide future research and tool development for quantum computing. The dataset is available at: https://github.com/kriss-u/QRepoAnalysis-Paper.