# DependEval: Benchmarking LLMs for Repository Dependency Understanding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.06689 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06689/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07732/) (2021)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01210/) (2023)
- [DeepSeek-Coder: When the Large Language Model Meets Programming -- The Rise of Code Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14196/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models are not Fair Evaluators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17926/) (2023)
- [CodeGen: An Open Large Language Model for Code with Multi-Turn Program Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13474/) (2022)
- [StarCoder: may the source be with you!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06161/) (2023)
- [GPT-NeoX-20B: An Open-Source Autoregressive Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06745/) (2022)
- [RepoCoder: Repository-Level Code Completion Through Iterative Retrieval and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12570/) (2023)
- [RepoBench: Benchmarking Repository-Level Code Auto-Completion Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03091/) (2023)
- [CrossCodeEval: A Diverse and Multilingual Benchmark for Cross-File Code Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11248/) (2023)
- [SantaCoder: don't reach for the stars!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.03988/) (2023)
- [ClassEval: A Manually-Crafted Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs on Class-level Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01861/) (2023)
- [Granite Code Models: A Family of Open Foundation Models for Code Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04324/) (2024)
- [Repository-Level Prompt Generation for Large Language Models of Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.12839/) (2022)
- [HumanEval-XL: A Multilingual Code Generation Benchmark for Cross-lingual Natural Language Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16694/) (2024)
- [EvoCodeBench: An Evolving Code Generation Benchmark Aligned with Real-World Code Repositories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00599/) (2024)
- [M2rc-Eval: Massively Multilingual Repository-level Code Completion Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21157/) (2024)
- [RepoMasterEval: Evaluating Code Completion via Real-World Repositories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03519/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Latent Inter-User Difference Modeling for LLM Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20849/) (2025)
- [VistaDPO: Video Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal Direct Preference Optimization for Large Video Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13122/) (2025)
- [From Code Foundation Models to Agents and Applications: A Comprehensive Survey and Practical Guide to Code Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18538/) (2025)
- [EvoEmpirBench: Dynamic Spatial Reasoning with Agent-ExpVer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.12718/) (2025)
- [STAR: Mitigating Cascading Errors in Spatial Reasoning via Turn-point Alignment and Segment-level DPO](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00558/) (2026)
- [Find, Fix, Reason: Context Repair for Video Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16243/) (2026)
- [No Place to Hide: Benchmarking Video Hallucination with Background-Controlled Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31933/) (2026)
- [MEMRES: A Memory-Augmented Resolver with Confidence Cascade for Agentic Python Dependency Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16941/) (2026)
- [DeepDiscovery: A Location-Inference Framework for Task-Level Repository Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22906/) (2026)
- [SemVerBench: Benchmarking LLM Comprehension of Version-Constraint Resolution Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11180/) (2026)
- [Deeply Dual Supervised learning for melanoma recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01994/) (2025)
- [Edge Detection for Organ Boundaries via Top Down Refinement and SubPixel Upsampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06805/) (2025)
- [DualResolution Residual Architecture with Artifact Suppression for Melanocytic Lesion Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06816/) (2025)
- [VesselRW: Weakly Supervised Subcutaneous Vessel Segmentation via Learned Random Walk Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06819/) (2025)
- [Converted, Not Equivalent: Benchmarking Codebase Conversion via Observational Equivalence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.29054/) (2026)
- [Generation of Web Apps with Agentic IDEs: An Empirical Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20903/) (2026)
- [Are Frontier VLM Agents Ready to Be Robot Generalists? An Empirical Study with the Embodied Agent Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00854/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While large language models (LLMs) have shown considerable promise in code generation, real-world software development demands advanced repository-level reasoning. This includes understanding dependencies, project structures, and managing multi-file changes. However, the ability of LLMs to effectively comprehend and handle complex code repositories has yet to be fully explored. To address challenges, we introduce a hierarchical benchmark designed to evaluate repository dependency understanding (DependEval). Benchmark is based on 15,576 repositories collected from real-world websites. It evaluates models on three core tasks: Dependency Recognition, Repository Construction, and Multi-file Editing, across 8 programming languages from actual code repositories. Our evaluation of over 25 LLMs reveals substantial performance gaps and provides valuable insights into repository-level code understanding.
